The "D" Word

Sometimes, my mind drifts off from my body when I'm in the middle of doing something or talking to someone. Not because I'm bored, but like my spirit belongs somewhere else. I'll fall off into this haze where I can hear and see but only distantly, as if through a strange reflection of my life. How did I get here? It's just like that floating feeling that happens when I'm on the cusp of deep sleep, then the impact of the great fall yanks me from my haven. It feels the same way when I snap back to my life from those moments; like I didn't really expect it though I knew I couldn't stay away forever. Sometimes, though, I really wish I didn't come back.

This thing is scary. I can't swat it away like a flea, or run from it as though it were a dog. I can not tell it to leave me alone or switch it off. No matter who I'm with, how many lights are on, what song I listen to, what specialist I talk to, what pill I take or what activity I try to occupy myself with, it's always there. Trapped within me, inside my mind, tangible only to me. It's like an annoying, condescending person constantly following you around steering your thoughts. Like your shadow, you can never separate yourself from it no matter what you do. It's a big, invisible suffocating blanket that paralyzes me on the inside. It is a tall, dark, looming, sick version of myself that I can't sift through to be me, exclusively.

I feel like all the drugs do is distract me from the clouds for a while, muddying my thoughts up, inhibiting my ability to focus. They numb my pain and my joy, my sorrow and hope, my suffocation and imagination, my regret and ambition. They send my mind on a wild goose-chase of random thoughts that never go anywhere, like a train-track with levers that switch at will. But once the train stops, the cloud is still there. It takes up the whole sky, and railroads across entire continents are no match, because they are enveloped in the fog that is the Earth's atmosphere. And when I'm alone, there it is, bouncing around inside my head, and I can't let it out. Spheres have no doors. The problem is inside my mind where I can't control it, but it can control me. That's what's so scary. I can't be free of my shadow no matter what I do or where I go. It weighs on me heavily, thick black smog, every day.

When the pills aren't doing their job, that is.