God, he was so tired.

No matter how hard he worked,

How hard he played,

Sleep eluded him.

Insomnia

The doctor nods sagely,

Jotting illegible scribbles

On his clipboard.

This is the sixth prescription;

Yet another bottle of sleeping pills

With a name he didn't even try to pronounce.

What else was new?

However, he popped them anyway,

Chasing them with a swig of coppery water,

Cut the lights,

And settled to sleep.

Refreshed.

The next morning,

He woke.

He couldn't believe how awake,

How absolutely rejuvinated he felt!

A deep, dreamless sleep

Announcing itself as absolute bliss.

He phoned the doctor;

They'd found the right type and dose.

Both of them were happy.

Coworkers marveled at productivity,

Even his boss patted him on the back.

His friends were overjoyed

At his activity at the gym,

How energized and animated he was.

They played a game of baseball;

He struck five home runs,

Running and making them all.

It was a good day.

And another good night

As dreamless sleep took him once more.

Another refreshing morning.

Over time though,

The pills weakened.

His doctor upped the doses.

They both hoped

It'd be enough.

He took four.

Six.

Eight.

Ten.

But the effects

Only continued to wane.

Desperation struck one night.

He downed the whole bottle;

All he wanted was the sleep,

The energy,

The way his life had changed

For the better in the beginning!

The officers collected the body

That had been missing

For two weeks.

They informed his parents

That their child would not be visiting

For Christmas that year,

Or for any other.

The doctor was investigated

For malpractice.

After all, the only difference between poison and medicine...

Is the dosage.

There’s a point where you realize you’re not alright. Up until then, you kind of ignore the signs. It begins with a tiredness, something past bone-deep. You used to literally climb mountains, attack trails with an enthusiasm approaching ferocity, and now your own limbs seem almost too much to move. There is a bed, and it’s yours, but now it is more than where you sleep. It’s the cocoon you are wrapped inside, and unfurling yourself from it each day seems to do nothing but take you away from the dreams where you are still pushing rocks aside, searching for a higher peak barely marked by footsteps.

Maybe if you just stay in that cocoon, you’ll grow wings and find the top.

You still climb, yes, but now it is the walls inside your head that need attacking, and there are no handholds or little signs of those who have come and gone before you. It is only you, and you did not bring enough water, didn’t realize how long it would take or how misty the sky would become, hovering above your head with the promise of a storm never mentioned in the forecast.

There’s an ache in your chest now, a hollow opening that somehow doesn’t stop the thrumming of heart beneath ribs, though sometimes you feel a stuttering. A hesitation. Sometimes, you revel in that stutter. Sometimes that mist rolls overhead, and you hope it swallows you alive.

You still do not have wings.

The bones inside your skin match the ones in the person beside you. Sometimes you forget that person is there, but then your shoulders might brush and your heart might do its lovely, frightening little stutter, and you remember. There are shapes in that mist now, floating wisps of a word, shy remnants of a smile, the shadow of a structure built thousands of years ago by someone who shared your bones, too. You’d like to see it clearly, maybe in the fall.

There’s a humming in your head that sounds like a song you knew growing up, something that speaks of a bay or a bog or a frog that sits on a log. There’s a hand in yours, and it holds tight, and you remember.

There will always be new mountains, and you do not have to climb them alone.

#SJTaylor15 #WritingChallenge #Disease #MentalIllness

For a time, I worried that you were parasitic.

Begging the doctors to cut you from my flesh.

You drained me, sucking energy from my atoms.

I could feel the marrow of my bones thinning.

Then, one day, I came to see you as symbiotic.

No longer a nuisance but a partner in a dance.

Accepting our two-step, our waltz, our tango.

I found the balance between your light and mine.

But my plea’d been heard by the doctor surgeons.

And against my will, they tore you from my body.

Now, I writhe in agony and longing.

Waiting for the day when the sun will again shine.