Lie. Don’t tell the doctor you don’t sleep more than a few hours a night, go days without eating, a week without showering. If you tell her the truth, the words you don’t want to hear will split you open again like a backache kick from inside the body.
Wait. Wait it out as long as you can. Hold on to fibers until they shred and slip, emptying your palms.
Speak. Tell the truth. But don’t tell it all. Tell the doctor just enough that she will say what you don’t want to hear, we need to increase your dosage, but not enough truth that she ups the meds too drastically. She says this can be temporary and we will see how you feel on the increased dosage. You tell her, I still want to feel, but you know even that is a lie somedays.
Take. Take the new pill added to the old pill to achieve the right dosage. You tell yourself, this doesn’t have to be hard, because the body knows how to swallow. Don’t beat yourself up for upped meds. The brain isn’t as well trained as the throat. You know this already. You know this by now.
Wait. It will take weeks for you to possibly feel better again. Wait and let it pass over you. Wait and sleep through it as the increase zombifies, nullifies, quiets the too loud parts of you and performs a brain drain. Wait and do what the body wants: sleep or stay awake all night, eat water for dinner or chewable food, wander from room to room like a ghost without the baggage or stay in bed ankle chained to the empty inside you. Wait and see, the doctor says. Wait.
Maggie Wolff is a queer writer. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Black Fox Literary Magazine, The Lascaux Review, Saw Palm, and Qu Literary Magazine. She is working on her first poetry collection, which follows three generations of women as they navigate depression, addiction, and suicide. She is a poetry candidate in the MFA creative writing program at the University of Central Florida.
Lost Balloon 