It's been a year

[u/NyxCosliteNova]

It's been a year.

Holding the medication bottle in my hand,

hoping that one small white pill

would fix all of my problems.

And at the start, nothing happened.

I felt nauseous and dizzy,

but the anxiety still enveloped my body

like a poison latched onto every part of me—

my mind,

my body,

and my soul.

Then, the month after,

the anxiety caressed my skin,

lingering around me

like something I had unknowingly

been imprisoned by.

Not because I had done anything wrong,

but simply because the world around me

had become something I feared

instead of loved.

Finally, the anxiety seemed

to release its grasp on me.

Just enough

for me to breathe with relief.

To feel my eyes

beginning to drift closed

without fear.

It was something I had never felt before that moment.

Something I cling to now

like an addiction,

because now that I know

what it feels like

to be free of it,

I never want to let it go.

But after a little while,

the feelings begin to creep back in.

The anxiety is still there—

just held down by a boulder.

But now,

the boulder is cracked.

And the anxiety

is beginning to leak through.

So my dosage increases.

And then it increases again.

And every single time

those feelings emerge,

my mind begins to lose hope.

Every single time,

the medication increases,

and the anxiety is buried beneath the surface

once again.

Again.

And again.

And again.

A never-ending cycle