PM Dose: 600mg lithium carbonate, 5mg clonazepam, 100mg Lamictal, 10mg Abilify.

I just snapped out of a deep and needed sleep. Something more wants to burst out of me and 715mg of prescription drugs is not going to dam it.

My eyes feel better closed. My tear ducts remain fatigued, hours after their surrender. They knew what they were up against; they remember her. The shivers from this bawl curled me over, and produced a fierce current of tears and mucous—all of which was very unpleasant and necessary.

The expulsions conjured a body memory of visiting hours in the hospital. Despite wary nurses, and the encroaching company of curious patients, she could always find me inside. She was the only one that I would let stay. Even during the worst, she was still; she was safe; she was base.

I cannot separate the hysteria of those fits from the psychotic mania and abysmal depression that enveloped them. Those events are all strangled in memory—mine and others. A plunge through that muck might salvage stories and reclaim experiences, but also petrifies me, for fear of agitating cruel memories of what I can do, and have already done. So much of my rapid-cycling era is buried beneath this even surface of medicated Type II—it has to be.

Our last phone call was modest, but healthy . . . ample. Tonight’s was a virulent injection of misery and regret. Somehow I managed to tell her, between sobs, that she was “better than medicine.” She was a supplement in my ongoing recovery, another ingredient in the fusion of ‘feel better’ that I had been guzzling. Her love relegated the medication to the shroud where other tenuous variables like diet and stress hid with inconsequence. “Better than medicine–” the words do not appear as lauding in text as my whimpers [to] her earlier. I have to remind myself of the year and a half that it took to produce them, to thank her, if I am to be convinced they carry any charge.

I told her how hard this past semester had been without her—she had no idea. Most people still don’t. They only seem to believe what I tell them. And, I could do better to reveal what really matters—that I am suffering. I feel forever compelled to compromise and compress what I feel into what I speculate the interested can digest. It’s a scathing process that bastardizes my emotions, my self.

The truth is I have been particularly obedient to my medications since my last birthday. Before then, I considered my prescriptions loose recommendations, or “required texts.” It was not a conscious decision to substitute her effect for the anticipated effect of the drugs. Yet, now I see myself slipping into a whirlpool of withdrawal from her with the guilt of having guided myself here gently.

My most reliable conduit to healing is suffering—the cycles never end. In a few more hours I will close my eyes and swallow my tender feelings with pure elixir from my Nalgene and a 400mg prayer.