Have You Been Taking Your Medicine?
I’m nine years old and there’s a weight in my chest. Less than a decade ago, I arrived here, and the more I hear about this place, the worse it becomes. I’ve learned that people I love can fall asleep and never wake up. I’ve learned men with guns can break into my neighbors’ homes and shoot them dead in their pajamas. I’ve seen kids just a few years older than me lying in caskets with reconstructed bodies following vehicular accidents that happened over the course of a few short moments. I’ve noticed the God they speak of in Church each Sunday does a poor job of protecting us. I’ve begun to wonder if this was all a lie.
I vocalize my discomfort with the situation. I put words to my existential pangs. I visit with death through stories and poems. I question whether there is any purpose to my being here. My expressions earn me an appointment with a psychiatrist. He has an accent. He labels me with anxiety and depression, with no mention of the trauma that brought me here. He prescribes medication. In two to four weeks, I will begin seeing improvements in my emotional state. I will stop talking about the way I feel.
When I seek the support of an adult in my home, I am met with an inevitable response.
Have you been taking your medicine?
I’m 19-years-old and there’s a lump in my throat. My first true love has gone. My heart is unrecognizable. My pain is great. I turn easily to alcohol because this is what we’re meant to do when the world becomes too uncomfortable. I fill a thermos with pink liquor and go downtown. Downtown, my pain can be drowned with sound. Downtown, there is no loneliness. No silence. No place to sit with my thoughts. No one asks me how I am and there’s no need to be honest. I feel nothing, and I feel terrible, and it’s happening all at the very same time.
I’ve had an easy life. I’m told my suffering has no meaning. I’m not allowed to feel sad or angry. I’m naïve. I’ve had everything handed to me. I’m spoiled. I’m just easily agitated. I am the queen of poor, pitiful me.
Have you been taking your medicine?
I’m 33. My dad lies beside me and we’re just waiting to him to die. He’s been sleeping for days and there’s no chance of him waking up. We watch episodes of Andy Griffith on the television in his bedroom as if he were awake beside us. The nurses say his heart is so strong, it doesn’t seem to want to give up beating. He doesn’t move or speak, but when I place my palm into his, I swear I feel him holding my hand.
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I step away from a work meeting to meet virtually with my doctor. The pain of watching my dad die is unbearable. I cannot escape it. There is only one solution. It’s a solution I learned long ago.
I need more medicine.
I’m 37 and I decide to engage in an experiment.
After 29 years of medicating, I stop.
I throw myself into the void. It feels dark and mysterious, like swimming to the bottom of the ocean all alone.
I feel worse, but somehow better.
I cry listening to music. I shed tears for children whose names I read in the news. I feel sensitive and soft. My heart is like velvet. I feel angry. I feel sentimental. I feel sad. I feel regretful. I feel childlike. I feel everything. Again, I feel nine years old.
I’ve learned and practiced and taught strategies for sitting with uncomfortable feelings. But now, for the very first time, I get to use them. I savor this unique opportunity to feel something, to let it move me. My decades-long vacation from the sensations that make me human has left me feeling homesick. The home I miss is the emotion that accompanies us in our time here. It’s the mystery presented by death. It’s the longing to express these feelings with those around me, to be reminded that I am never alone.
It’s this longing to share and express my feelings and responses that led me to this lesson I learned much too early in life. This lesson taught me that feelings must be hushed, quieted, and buried. The lesson was that my expressions of pain were invalid and unwarranted. My pain was not something to process, but to suppress, primarily for the comfort and convenience of those around me. For the benefit of those who know only to respond to the feelings of others with one cold phrase.
Have you been taking your medicine?
