Swallow

They say pain fades, unless you feed it. I personally find myself taking a daily dose of self-doubt and hate, prescribed by my life’s greatest anti-hero. Of course, I am no doctor, but I would not recommend it. I find that with every dose, I become more distant with my own roots. Although, maybe that is the point. I can never remember why these pills were prescribed to me in the beginning, wherever or whenever the beginning is. It must be for a reason.

Now I have been taking them for so long, it has become my easiest habit. I often find myself spacing out and taking them on autopilot, with no self awareness of my actions, which has led me to accidentally double or even triple dosing in a day. On those days, I become bed-bound. The world beyond my door distorts into the definition of danger and every sound I hear not only sets off, but becomes the alarms themselves. An awful sound it is, and the side effects of my prescribed medication, as well as fatigue, depression, and a disconnect from self. I’ll stay in my room until the effects wear off and allow me to be social again.

I used to be an extrovert, I think. I enjoyed going on outings with the friends I had just met the days prior. I may even recall a time in my childhood that I volunteered to lead school clubs and even became the very embodiment of the “open door” lyric in the class friendship song. Whatever happened to those days?

I trace the seams in the curtain draped over my bedroom window and I lean my head against the glass. It is cold; like a stone floor I seem to remember in the form of a feeling with no picture, but I cannot put my finger on where it is from or any of the context surrounding such a feeling.

I open the orange pill bottle in my sweating hands and begin to trace the plastic rim with my paper cut fingertips. How intriguing it is that the bottle has never gone empty. It is in fact, always filled to the “one month’s worth” fill line. I can assure you, it has been far longer than a month, or two, or one hundred twenty.

A flutter of iridescent black feathers catches my attention from outside the window, followed by a flicker of the overcast sunlight bouncing off the snow. The light catches itself as the shimmer on a silvery purple ribbon, held between the bones of a raven’s beak. Curious. I may recall a time in my childhood that I owned a ribbon just like that one.

I dump two pills into the palm of my hand. In goes today’s prescribed dose. Swallow. No, I don’t recall that time at all.

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