i remember
the first time i thought
taking medication was a bad thing
a thing
i would be better off not doing

i remember
wondering if it would make me a different person because
if it’s changing my brain, and i believe my brain is what makes me me, isn’t it changing me

i remember
taking it anyway, because it was supposed to help, and it did . . . sometimes
but it kind of made me worse,
the first one did anyway, but that’s another story

i remember
taking the second kind and knowing
that this was helping
it was making me feel better,
but then

i remember
my cousin telling me he didn’t need medication, that it wouldn’t help him
plus,
he was strong enough without it anyway

i remember thinking
“doesn’t that make me weak”
and i didn’t want to be weak
so i stopped taking
my medication

i remember
my cousin telling me i wasn’t weak either way
that i should take the meds if i needed them
but he also said “throwing meds at a problem isn’t always the solution”

so i remember
deciding it wasn’t the solution i wanted
i’d find a different one
i would be fine on my own
so now . . .

i remember
when I was taking medication
the lows weren’t quite so low
but
the highs weren’t quite so high either