Last night I decided to go back on medication.  I’ve been telling myself for a year that was never an option. I could live without it, I said. And it’s true, I can.  Life lived in pain is still life. It’s just not the life I want.

I have instructed myself that this is not a failure of will. It is no reflection on my strength, my courage or my hard work. It’s merely an acceptance of reality, an understanding that, being human, I sometimes need help to get along. I don’t think of myself as being “ill.”  I’m not disabled or disadvantaged. I’m just in drastic need of some extra serotonin.

Medication was part of my life for five years. I have a particular form of bipolar disorder that struck early and hard. Blame it on genetics, blame it on my home life, blame it on my personality, I don’t care. None of those factors adequately explains why I am who I am and I’m tired of labels anyway. I’m sure that I could find any number of excuses for my current state. There’s my ex, of course, henceforth known as The Douche (he doesn’t deserve a more creative title). I have no doubt that he is at least partially responsible for a depression that has lingered, ailing, over the past two months. Ironic, given his stated reason for leaving me.

Yes, I could find plenty of excuses. But they’re just that: excuses. They’re not reasons. I don’t really have a reason, and that’s ok. I don’t need one. This is how I feel right now and I don’t need to justify it or explain it. It’s my life. I will endure this too.

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness–
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

-Walkers with the Dawn, Langston Hughes

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