Pills. A nightmare come to life, and at a time when I was already ill-equipped to deal with anything of the shocking or difficult variety. At a time when my support structure had eroded and crumbled beneath me. At a time when I already hated myself.
Really it could be worse, and this is the mantra that I repeat inwardly when I will myself to ingest the little buggers, the chemical cocktail supposedly designed to take the edge off a manic episode, to impede overactive receptors in my dopamine pathway, to slow things down. To dope me up. It could be worse, I say. I could be worse, because it probably will get worse, if it doesn't get better soon.
That whole "you aren't your illness" thing, I like it. I like it because it tells people not to be ashamed or to consider themselves failures or fuck-ups or drains on society. But really, nice as those words are for people who need the coddling, they are absolute bullshit. I am my illness as much as I am a university student or a french canadian or a woman. I have taken enough sociology to recognize this. I have adopted my illness as part of my protean self, and I am my illness. As long as I am ill, provided I am able to function enough to think, I will be my illness, and my illness will be me. It will seep through the chemical haze and take hold of me and I will lose control, and when I regain it again, it will be me who is red-handed, who has to own up, whose reputation and relationships and self-worth are made to suffer, because my illness and I are one and the same.
