Attempting to Manage Mental Illness

Rachel Carney

1.

i don’t want to be sitting in this office that is meant to be comfortable but is clearly still a doctor’s office, surrounded by these pointless knickknacks that are supposed to be calming or interesting or distracting enough to take my mind off of where i really am. i do like this little plushy basketball and so i grab it and spin it over in my hands until i get bored and then grab the neon fidget spinner. it gives my fingers more to do, so i flick it for the next sixty minutes until i get to leave.

2.

The blue pill filled my head with cotton balls, slipped in through the ear canal. White space, thick and full, replaced all the words

caught at the back of the tongue, stuck stubborn to tonsils. Peeled from the palate, a parapet. Manifest a croak to pass as an answer to a question that can’t seem to bypass the cotton to my brain.

The lady with the glasses in the chair across from me cocks my head with one hand & with the other begins tweezing the cotton out, through my mouth, ears, & nose.

White strands multiply on the table in front of me until my head slowly feels less full & the words come back to me.

3.

Wake up, breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, class, lunch, homework, gym, shower, therapy, dinner, study, blue pill, green & orange pill, white pill, sleep repeat indefinitely.

-Rachel Carney is a junior from Mooresville, NC, pursuing a major in Exercise and Sports Science and a minor in Creative Writing.-