Pill

It’s half-past ten at night, and I’m in bed. My hair is freed from its perfunctory pinning, my earrings tossed on the desk. I’m all cuddled up in my boyfriend’s Apocalyptica jumper- he gave it to me last night because it’s too short for him in the arms. It swamps me, of course, but I like it. Under the Ariel it still holds a scent-memory of him. Snuggling under the duvet, I wonder fleetingly if this necessary, debate whether to go to sleep and leave it until the morning- but I mustn’t stall any longer. I can’t.

So, to business. Putting my laptop to one side, essay barely touched and the various policies of de Gaulle momentarily forgotten, I slide one week’s silver tray out of the box. I slice my thumbnail through ‘Thu’ and pop a single ellipsoid pill out of its foil wrapping and look at it for a while as if that alone will cure me somehow. It is so small and yet it means so much, represents a four-year battle lost. It is a confession, it is a plea for help, it shatters my carefully constructed façade and declares to the world in bold white Citalopram-font that my current mental state leaves much to be desired.

At this moment all of this ceases to be a bad dream. This act makes it frighteningly real. I can’t help but think How on earth did it come to this? Things like this happen to troubled teenagers in films and social pariahs and poets in paperback novels, not to dull just-turned-nineteen year olds with absolutely everything to live for. Again that sick, hot, humiliated feeling turns my stomach, like it did when Aaron rang the university’s medical centre, when he physically dragged me across the campus, when we sat breathing in the faint smell of disinfectant and staring at leaflets about meningitis, about safe sex, even when I sat in the chair and heard the dreaded ‘So what seems to be the problem?’ I feel like a fraud.

But of course I know it makes sense. This is affecting the way I function. I couldn’t have gone on much longer, couldn’t have stretched the pretence out for another year, two years, five years. When he got it out of me, I suddenly wanted to talk about it- the numbness, the misery, the mercurial moods, the fear that I was slowly losing myself like sand to a rising tide. I wanted him to know that the girl he loves was hiding something, holding something back; wanted to give him a chance to be free of this mess- and, most selfishly, more than anything- I wanted him to hold me close and stroke my hair and whisper that it was going to be just fine. To my extreme relief, my eternal gratitude, that was what he did, what he continues to do so well.

My parents knew I’d been avoiding their calls, and when they found out they asked why I did not tell them. In truth there was any number of reasons. Because this is my first year of university, my first few months away from the familial nest, the birth of my new independence. Because you didn’t believe me when I tried, numerous times in the past, to explain. Because saying it would change a line from a play-script into a grey razor-edged shard of reality, plunging its way inwards.
Without any further thought I gulp the tiny tablet down with a swig of water. There. Done. That’s it. Now to wait.

Apparently it gets worse before it gets better. Apparently the drug takes time to build up, so I won’t feel anything for at least another month or so –well, I didn’t expect a miracle cure.

My hands need something to do and I can’t turn my mind back to work just yet, so I smooth out the little booklet on the duvet.
‘Effects when treatment with Citalopram is stopped too quickly include… Dosage will have to be gradually reduced…’

No. I cannot make this an integral part of my life. I don’t want to have to be weaned off the stuff. The disgust strengthens my resolve to be free almost more than anything else. But I will take it, I will wait for things to change. There have been long, dark nights where I could so easily have become just another statistic, a photograph in a frame, one of the vacant seats in a lecture theatre. But I have people who love me, and are willing to help me, from whom I don’t have to hide a thing. I am surrounded by this vast wealth of knowledge and discovery, and there’s a heck of a lot I still haven’t done, a whole lot of experiences I still need to forge. I have been given life and I am going to savour every second of it, because I owe the world that at least.

It’s quite late now. I plump up the pillows- a single bright hair, not mine- is clinging to one of them. It manages to make me smile as I remember to be grateful for what I have. Shutting the laptop down, I put away my books and, comfortably weary, turn out the light.