1.
My new shrink is nervous. He’s young and shy, with a weird last name. I’m not sure if I trust him. He looks like he just got out of medical school. He looks young enough that I could have babysat him when I was in Junior High, back when I had frizzy, permed hair and braces.
2.
“No, no, that won’t do,” he says when I describe that I went only slightly manic this summer: I only sorta made a mad fool of myself, only sorta drank too much. I was only slightly delusional, not like the previous year when I listened to Pet Sounds nonstop and thought I was in love with a 22-year-old from Northern Minnesota.
3.
Dr. Nervous gives me a new cocktail. “I’m not promising it will work, but we can hope. Maybe it will. But you know, it doesn’t always. So let’s feel like it will. Let’s feel lucky.”
4.
I’m not feeling lucky. I take the new pill as prescribed, try not to look up the list of side effects on the internet or go on weird Bipolar message boards where everyone says how shitty their lives are, how fat they’ve gotten, how they can’t get off no matter how hard they try.
5.
My head starts to ache. My skin starts to itch. But after a few days, I feel like brushing my teeth. I take a bath. I don’t need a gallon of coffee or a crane to pull me out from under the blankets and pillows I’ve piled around my head.
6.
I’d feel lucky if it wasn’t for this fucking headache. It’s nonstop now. I wonder if I have meningitis or a brain bleed that has gone undiagnosed for years. Maybe I should go on one of those message boards. At least I don’t think I’m getting fat. Yet.
7.
I put on music for the first time in weeks. I go on the internet and pretend to look for jobs. I wonder where all the people are I used to talk to, send silly, frilly emails back and forth. I remember how it used to be when I liked to write. But my head is killing me, and it’s getting hard to see. Everything is a blur.
8.
I wake up and hate. All I can think about is my head and how I hate everything: babies and birthdays and flowers and sunshine. I hear about some mad shooter on the radio with hot bullets that tear through skulls and limbs and stomachs. I think how much he must hate, that with every shot – one, two, there – maybe he hates just a bit less. I hate that I even had that thought.
9.
I call Dr. Nervous. I tell him I’m not lucky, that I can’t take these chalky pills that make my skull split. “Don’t worry,” he says, “We’ll get you fixed up somehow. Fixed up like new.” I want to tell him I’m not a car or a four-leaf clover. But I say, “Yeah. Sure we will.”
