And the static whirrs
A reflection on SSRIs and antipsychotics
You labor under nothing they say, too flimsy to be a delusion yet the bruising is visible. It’s a muting thing, mutable like a lulling tide shifting from a roar, maybe it’s just that for once in your life you are being put into a deep slumber. Hush now, then. Rest. Take respite from ecstasies upon ecstasies even if they never bored you, even if you miss them terribly. I feel like I should be able to describe this simply to you but I cannot since I do not feel it like a knife to the gut anymore, or like a chorus of angels screaming in my ears. It’s just me, standing here, with almost nothing to say and no one speaking through me, little to offer, a beautiful hollow casing trying to page through old scripts to see if maybe I can still put on a show of it. You learn to scrounge to worship something down here, at the end of all things, the static growling in your ear mirroring that old roar, whirring and churning, the tv station’s off air. There’s nothing on. There’s nothing to watch at all. I can’t see the visions anymore. Maybe now I can hold down a job. No reward, no risk, no risk, no love. I feel like you cannot actually meet me like this, because isn’t me, I’m asleep so I can stay alert and present, so a neater me can put on a different kind of display. The TV screen’s back on but what’s playing is uninteresting. So you turn it off.