Are You Taking Your Pills?

By Nicole Cater

I normally write only about personal experiences.  But it is my firm belief that no matter the illness, all sufferers cringe a little upon hearing this phrase: Are you taking your pills? 
 
What sounds like an innocent combination is a loaded question even when asked in the most casual way.  The answer is fraught with danger.  And so I give you replies to this question. Whether you think them in your head, mumble them under your breath, or go balls to the walls and shout them like they deserve to be shouted; they are true. Hopefully, any well people reading this will pause before asking.
 

• Are you taking you pills?  Fuck you; I don’t need t to tell you anything. That’s between me and my doctor.

 

• Are you taking you pills?  I’m righteously angry with you for being stupid and not doing your job.  Your need for behavior modification does not require immediate medication on my part.

 

• Are you taking you pills?  You just confessed to me that you forget to take three doses of your strep throat medication, and that was only for 10 days.  Most people who take medications for THE REST OF THEIR LIVES do so without fail with perhaps a screw up once or twice A YEAR.

 

• Are you taking you pills?  Nope, I ‘m just really pissed at you because you’re acting like a douche baby, and my doctor thinks the most effective time for my medication is at night, but you’re annoying, so I’m just going to walk away.

 

• Are you taking you pills?  Funny, you don’t look like my mom, my dad, my stepmom, my boyfriend, or my psychiatrist which means you don’t get an answer…

 

• Are you taking you pills?  Just walk away.  Leave them guessing.  It adds to your mentally illness mystique.

 
I would like to point out that the hard work my mom does. There is a certain difference that comes over when medicated, call it calmness.  It is there that my mom knows I’m in trouble, that a panic attack is eminent.  She is the unsung hero of my disease, who deals with my crazy mood swings when I can’t sleep for a week and a start seeing this out of the corner of me eye.  And no matter how nice I try to be to her, it comes out strained, shaky, and sounds mean.  I love her, and everything she does for me.
 
And what would I do without Jeremy, The Keeper of the Sleep.  He has seen what lack of sleep can do, and it can turn me into a not-very-nice person.  And so, with one sleepless night under my belt, he takes me from the writing room, Fredo too, and the current book I’m reading and let’s me fall asleep.
 
I mention this because they never ask, “are you taking your pills?” They trust me… with a few peccadilloes. I, a normal human.  Show me human without peccadilloes and I’ll show you a human that doesn’t exist.  We all have strange quirks.  People with mental illness just have to take medication for our strange quirks.
 
Dedicated to Shelby Keister
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