In the ever-evolving world of mental health many of us have faced moments of uncertainty speaking with and meeting with providers and medication prescribers on our path to wellness. So many of us have experiences of getting on medications that are supposed to improve our mental health and yet months or years down the road when we no longer need them it becomes nearly impossible to imagine a life without them. Pharmaceuticals, which have helped so many people, often become a problem in and of themselves, and we are at the mercy of our prescribers to help us forge new paths towards our optimum mental health.
Life is not about being happy all the time, or feeling fulfilled all the time—neither is it about numbing out or staying distracted. Secure, healthy people still experience ups and downs in life. Everyone has bad days, sometimes bad weeks. It sometimes feels like we live in a culture that wants to medicate away the experience of being human.
Sometimes it feels like our own medication providers fail to see that suffering, struggling, tension, and discomfort are all aspects of change, growth, and evolution—they’re not always signs of deeper personal problems that require “fixing”.
Sometimes it feels like we medicate away every problem instead of feeling it, experiencing it, and learning from it.
This poem comes from the amazing mind of Jen Grady, local Missoulian, who graciously allowed me to share this potent piece of writing about an experience that so many of us can relate to.
The Rehearsal
About a week before we meet
I begin the talk again.
Practice for the performance of
The most palatable version of Jen.
I don't trust you, no offense
You yield unnerving power
In the audition for my sanity
You are my witching hour
My lies have caught up with me
My 'comfortably numb' long gone
Now the drugs on offer
Just make everything wrong
The weight of a misdiagnosis
Feeling mislabeled and misunderstood
What harm worse than indoctrination?
Is this the "right way" to feel good?
Feeling good was rare
In the days of self-medication
In the time of abusive love
Dead moms, and bodily mutilation.
Feeling ok was so foreign
I could be convinced reprieve was illness
But in putting myself back together
I found increasing comfort in the stillness
Leaving substances and abusers
Finding a home and making it mine
Having food readily available
I now know my own baseline.
What I questioned as too euphoric
Turned out to be rather benign
When I'm safe in my own home
The stress, the dependencies in decline.
A good day is now just a good day
I know that, but fear you do not
I really need to contemplate
If it matters what you think- it's fraught.
Set aside your diagnostics
Just take me as I am
Let me heal free from your judgement
Because I'll prove to you I can.
See? I feel like I have to prove myself
As if only you grant a course reversal
And this is why the week before meeting,
I feel like I need a rehearsal.