Unmedicated

I don't write anymore. I remember when that was all that I did and the only thing I was proud of. I remember when writing was the only time I felt safe, and at peace, and whole. And then it wasn't. I don't remember that. I'm not sure when everything changed but it was somewhere in the downward spiral of addiction, when I just had no words, or the words I did have haunted me so badly when I put them on paper. Writing didn't give me any peace anymore. I didn't want to think about what was happening to me, let alone lay it to a page where I'd have to read over it and remember, "Shit. That's my life I'm talking about." The writing stopped when I started writing letters I'd never send. When I choked without speaking. Halloween was our New Years. It was his first, but it was mine too. For some people, New Years is New Years, or their birthday is New Years. For me it was Halloween. Somehow never going quite right. Somehow always being the best night and the one I most looked forward to. Cynical people tell me I'm too old to look forward to things like Halloween now. People I trust. People I believe even when I don't want to. Like, if they said I'd be dead, you don't understand how quickly my organs would begin shutting down. That's how much I believe them. I look forward to Halloween. But I am too old now to do that. It' 8:20pm and I am home, and alone, and they would tell me that's how it is. That's just how it is. I'm lucky. I used to celebrate Devil's Night too. I hated how they tried to pervert it. All Saints or Angel Night. Let it be what it is. Let me have it. I'm not afraid of the dark parts. Only the light that lets me see the monster's faces. I went to bed early last night. I am depressed. And it isn't the kind that just simply happens. Where you wake up on a Wednesday and you can't get out of bed and you can't explain to your family who has never been depressed that something aching within you is making it impossible to eat or move or bathe. I am depressed and I have reasons. I can get out of bed. This is not an illness. It is a side effect of being caught in the center of a tornado, and not being able to fight through the funnel to reach the whole world on the other side. It is the symptom of the storm, when you are in the midst of it, so deep you can't even see it. Knowing that it touches down only so often, and when it does it only breeds destruction. And all the people who see it, don't know you are inside. I can go to work, and go to school, and get good grades, and clean up after myself. I can put on makeup. I am depressed. Everything hurts. Every second. I haven't cried in a long time. Even when he went away and ignored me, suddenly. Even when my breast stayed swelled up and red and painful. Even when my blood pressure was only 97/47. I didn't cry. One time I think I cried all my tears, the last of them, and that was just the end of it. Sometimes I feel like crying, I just don't. It's not something I think I do anymore. Even when my heart breaks now. Why cry? I'm unmedicated. Because even though everything hurts all the time, I still get out of bed. I still go to work. I do my homework. I get good grades. I clean my house, I bathe. I put on makeup. I laugh. Sometimes its scary when I laugh because I shake the same way I do when I cry. Sometimes I tear up and I don't know if I've crossed an imperceptible line between laughing and crying. But I don't cry anymore. I'm unmedicated because I don't cry. I'm unmedicated because I don't need medicine. I'm not ill, mentally or otherwise. I'm just depressed and there are reasons. And one of the reasons is medication. And what it did to someone I love. And how I said I love you to someone who ruined my life. It's halloween and I'm sober.