I’m tired all the time.
But my new medication
must be working,
because today I heard myself
whistling.
I had to stop.
To check to see if
the sound was really
coming out of me.
On my run this morning
I think I was smiling.
Breath heavy,
tufts of clouds like smoke
propelled out of my mouth.
Legs strong, feet steady on
leaf-smattered ground.
Something is shifting.
Sprouting.
I think about calling my NP and
confessing my love to him.
Almost cry over the fact
no one tried this sooner.
Terrified it’s going to
stop working.
Each word is another snowflake leading up to the avalanche. Creating something which used to not be there. Destroying that which used to be safe.
Don’t write about it. Your words are sharp, broken glass under delicate feet. Thoughts like drops of water, each one insignificant, but they come on like a flash flood. You’re drowning.
Sometimes writing can serve as a way to sort. Pulling belongings out of the bottom of your backpack, putting them in the correct drawer. But today writing is doing nothing but fanning your anxious flames. Pulling the cord on a chainsaw until it screams to life and you’re left wailing on the floor.
Don’t write about it. Take a breath and divert your attention. Watch TV, take a walk, make huge gashes of color with markers across a blank piece of paper. Crawl back into bed and hide under the covers. Look at yourself in the mirror and say, “This is really fucking hard.” But don’t say why.
“Hey, kiddo,” my dad says to me over the phone. My whole body becomes sunshine for a moment. “I don’t even know what time it is these days. It’s either light or dark,” he tells me when I ask when he’ll be at our new apartment.
“I feel that. It’s five o’clock all day, and then it’s suddenly time for bed.”
Quitting coffee for the second time this year was not timed well. Setting the clocks back is exhausting, caffeine withdrawals doubly so. As a result, I’ve been a walking shell for the last week.
It’s an accomplishment whenever I get out of bed, shower, get dressed. A day I remember to feed myself without Mason having to remind me is marked down as a success.
My writing has became a leaky faucet, drip by drip I work on three different projects. Mostly I just stare at the screen.
Started watching TV again. Lay on the couch underneath a soft, teal blanket and stare at the box as if I’m actually capable of keeping track of the plot line.
The train takes me out to the opposite side of the city and I run from the stop to the office of my new psychiatric nurse. For an hour and a half he asks me questions. “You’re on all these medications and you really don’t feel any better?”
“Some days. Maybe. A little. I don’t know. It’s hard to judge.”
He listens intently to all my answers and begins his wrap up with, “I want to take you off basically all of these, but first we have to find one thing that works.”
Each word felt like he was unburying me. Another brick lifted off my legs. I knew I’d cry if I said anything more than, “Yes, please.”
Ruby Pipes 