20
I lay in bed, waiting to hear voices. My psychiatrist has asked me if I have heard voices, and told me if I do I’m to ignore them, so hearing voices must be a possibility. I’m nineteen, and new to anxiety, panic attacks, and everything implicit. I don’t know what I’m facing. I don’t know what might come. I don’t know anything, so a mental health professional is logically my guide. I’ve never been so conscious of my thoughts. Like everybody, I think about what I might have to do, but only inasmuch as how it connects to do what I need to do in the world around me –…
15
I lay in bed, growing so stifled a fine sweat forms across my brow. I shouldn’t be sweating – it’s not hot – and when I push the covers down to my waist, I immediately feel the cold. Now I’m in two different climates: from the waist-down, I’m too hot, and from the waist-up I’m freezing. Here’s a side-effect of the Aropax – hot flushes. I’m only thirty or so, and struggling to reconcile what Aropax does to me. There are so many problems, but before I started them I had crippling OCD, and had been agoraphobic and living effectively as a shut-in for five years. This is the trade-off.…