(Apologies for talk of suicide.)

I stopped taking all of my bipolar medications in late February and early March. For a week or two, I spaced them out, intending on slowing each one down one by one. I got impatient and went faster than I should have. But let’s be honest: when you’re taking poison that you know is killing you, it’s only natural to want the poison gone as soon as possible.

And yes, my medicine was killing me. Not like a poison does, exactly. It was eating me alive in a different way. I was taking it like someone takes an antibiotic. My ever-changing moods and constant desire to kill myself was the bacterial infection, and the antipsychotics were the cure that would somehow make those intense feelings go away. That, of course, is not what antipsychotics do, and not how treating mental illness works. But I’m going to be honest again: if they weren’t doing that, then what the hell were they actually doing?

I’m not going to pretend like I was trying to ignore all of my doctors. For all I know, maybe the medications ended up messing with my memory. But here we go, honesty number three: I can’t tell you what my medicines were supposed to do. I don’t know what an antipsychotic does. I don’t know what Effexor does. Was it supposed to “take the edge off” of the most intense feelings of self-hatred? Make me feel more in control during times of incredible emotional turmoil?

Maybe it did, I don’t know. All I know is that medicine wasn’t the solution, and I didn’t have a backup plan.

I’ve been in Limbo for a long time. I’ve had a number of jobs, and I’ve had to throw all of them away because I couldn’t endure. One mistake in my medicine schedule, and any semblance of stability is thrown immediately out of the window. Wrong medicine? Well, here’s to two more months of waiting just to see if it “works”. Hint: they never did. Then try something new, and more waiting. Watch a movie with something particular twisted? Read a book with a particularly horrid detail? There goes the rest of the week. Watch someone on the news argue? Accidentally watch a hate-filled YouTube video or Tiktok? I have to wait at least two days for the sting of those emotions to become diluted and fade before I can focus on literally anything.

When I shoved a bottle full of pills into my mouth and swallowed, I noticed a couple of things. First, I had already made the decision way ahead of actually performing the action. I had made the decision without full knowing, so clearly that the suicide attempt was almost effortless. It was just a thing. A fully natural action. It was only about thirty seconds after I had swallowed the pills did I realize the full weight of what I had just done.

And that hit me hard. Hard enough that when I realized I couldn’t force myself to throw up (I was too afraid to physically do so), I called 911 for help.

Would the overdose have killed me if I didn’t? I don’t know. I don’t think that’s ever been the relevant question.

So, now that I am not taking any medications for my bipolar disorder, what does it feel like?

I still can’t watch movies or television. Body horror in particular is the worst; I’ll never scrub the idea of Unwinding out of my head (thanks Mr. Shusterman). I still can’t watch intense political debates. I still can’t approach Twitter. I still don’t trust myself with work; I have never been as dependable as I know I can be. I’ll still stumble into thought patterns that I consider “sticky”, that won’t resolve themselves without a lot of sleep and time.

There are moments of complete torture that feel like my nervous system is being overcharged, where I’m suddenly feeling way more than my power lines can handle, and it’s all I can do to pace around the room and occassionally hit my head like an old black-and-white television set that never gets clear reception. This happened most intensely about a month after I stopped all of my meds, and now it only happens when I’m stressed out. I actually find it slightly relieving to hit my forehead, my left upper arm, or my chest at times. I want to scream sometimes, but I don’t cry too much anymore, even though I intensely want to.

Did my medicine stop me from feeling? Or did they allow me to feel? Did it moderate or not? Why was that never consistent? And why do I not know, even all these years into this ordeal?

It took blowing up at my mom, then my sister, then my cousin to finally gather the courage to stop taking my medications altogether. And now that I have, I realize that medication never really was the answer. Or an answer. At all. I might have tried to explain how frustrating it feels to be back at square one, fifteen years after the fact. But I have to be honest one more time: there isn’t a square one to go back to. I left square one way behind me, before my mission, before I feared the world, and before these emotions began to overpower me.

The only difference between the medicated me and the non-medicated me is a complete lack of optimism. When I tried to commit suicide, I did so without a real understanding of what I had chosen to do. I hadn’t really given up. Even in that moment, I hadn’t really stopped trying. Not until now. I’ve never been so close to just… not wanting to try anymore. Maybe sometime soon I’ll finally admit that there really isn’t anything I can do to change the mess in my mind.

I walked willing into the presence of Death like a casual friend without looking at the chaos and darkness that encompassed Him. When I saw it, I became afraid and ran. And now I’ve come to a horrifying revelation: I’m still shrouded. The darkness I saw didn’t belong to Death at all. It belonged to me. I’m worried that I’ll choose that Angel’s embrace again over the brittle hope of a better life.

Always and forever, I feel like I’m one bad spark away from wanting to throw it all away. That’s no way to live.