Member Poem

The daylight fades to night. The darkness is all too familiar. Your meds have stopped working. You notice right away – the spontaneous tears; the startled jolts at imaginary fears.

You start faking your special type of normal until you can get your meds tweaked again; a higher dose – a different brand? You learned early how to fake it, how to pretend you’re normal, what excuses to use for which occasions. But as the night turns blacker you panic.
You don’t want your kids to see this creature hidden underneath the anti-depressants and the anti-anxiety pills - the magic potions that keep you safe in your state of false normalcy. You hide in the dark from them. You hide in the dark from everyone. Your husband speaks with the coaches and the teachers, and the parents of the friends.

You grew up seeing the monster your mother became in her manic phase. You remember the road trips with strange truckers who would force you into the bed of their semis in the shadows of the night, after your mother drank herself into a stupor.
You remember when she came down from her delusional high and when she sank into the blackness of depression. You remember helping your grandparents drag her to the car and drive her to the state hospital. Midnight steals what’s left of your stability.

You drive to work in the morning and for a microsecond you consider turning the wheel slightly into an oncoming semi. You pray that night will shroud you in permanence. You tell your boss your eyes are red because you didn’t sleep well last night. Maybe I’m coming down with something, you tell him. The doctor appointment you have scheduled is your psychiatrist, but you tell your co-workers he is your primary care doctor.

What really sucks about this is that you work in a mental health setting and you are surrounded by counselors and psychiatrists every day. But they don’t know you. They’ve only seen you when your magic potions are working. Your secret is kept hidden in the night, surrounded by darkness. The stigma of mental illness goes on because you are too ashamed to let them know.