Haze / ✓

part IIII

this is the last part! really hope you guys enjoy it, and there's a long author's note at the end :)

"So, Jeff," my therapist, an older guy named James, asked, looking at me over a pair of glasses, "You've been back on your pills for a month. How do you feel?"

There were thirty-one days in May. There was thirty-one days that I had been pack on my pills and I felt different. Better. The first week had been painful and the urge to go back off my pills had been so strong that it became a physical battle to not flush the pills again. The second week had been even harder in an emotional sense. I laid in my bed. I contemplated life and my pills. I wondered if I would ever be happiness - if there could be happiness with pills. Or without them.

This week was better.

I still wasn't completely happy with the idea of taking pills, but they had made me feel better. There weren't any thoughts of suicide or accidental attempts of it by taking too many pills. I wasn't exactly happy, but I had found something that had been missing from my life for a long, long time.

Peace.

"I'm all right," I say, lacing my fingers together and putting my hands on my lap, keeping my hands from fidgeting uncomfortably. As nice as James is, I'm no fan of therapy, "A lot better than before, that's for sure."

It's a lot easier to say than I'm better than before. A month ago I had been laying in a hospital bed, getting my stomach pumped, as my family sat around me crying. A month ago I had been on suicide watch as my mom looked at me with tear-filled eyes, wondering why I had done this when things had been going so good. Two weeks ago I had been contemplating going back.

It's a lot easier to say I'm doing better than it is to believe it, but I'm working on the second part.

I had to hit rock bottom to ever have a chance to fix anything, and I did. I had to fall as low as I could possibly go to ever have a chance at beginning to pull myself back up. I had to lose all hope before even a glimmer of hope was attainable. I had to lose it all to want to work at getting it back, and I had. I fell to the bottom. I lost it all. And now I was pulling myself back up from the bottom.

"How are the mood swings?" James asks, voice bordering on impatience, and I get the feeling that he's asked me that question more than once in our conversation. I blink and he continues, "Now that your back on the pills, things should be regulated again, but the mood swings can still be quite... Strong for the first few weeks."

Mood swings are something I've suffered through my whole life and something I will continue to suffer through. I know I'll go through uncontrollable periods of euphoria and long periods of intense depression, but I'm beginning to accept that. I know James isn't asking his question as a typical formality, though. After going off the pills for so long and then taking them regularly again, my... symptoms can come back stronger than ever. That's what he's asking about.

"They're okay," I respond, knowing I have to elaborate when James just stares at me, eyebrows raised in a gesture telling me to continue, "I fell behind in a lot of coursework, so I've been doing that. Usually it isn't too bad when I'm busy and focused on something else."

"But you can't stay focused on something else all the time, can you, Jeff? There will be times when you're doing nothing and your mind drifts. Can you handle that?"

I had experienced enough of what James was talking about to understand his question. When I was on my pills and busy, I barely had time to think about the bipolar or the affects of it. But when I was on the pills and doing nothing - like I had been the day before I went off my medication - my mind drifted to the bipolar, to the pills, to my life. When my mind drifted, I questioned what I was doing. Why I was doing it. I questioned the pills.