The Weight of Your World - NaPoWriMo Day #9

This one isn't brand-spanking new unfortunately, but you'll have to forgive me, as we were pretty busy today and spent the evening at an absolutely wonderful Molly Ringwald concert, which you can read about in the post that follows this one, An Evening with Molly Ringwald in Taylor, Michigan.

Tonight's NaPoWriMo offering is a poem that was written last May, right when I began weaning off of my prescribed anxiety meds in favor of mother nature's natural medicine, cannabis, as a legal medical marijuana patient here in Michigan. I'd been smoking and/or vaping since the previous October, and it was time to start cutting back on the benzos. I went through some ups and downs with that weaning process and ended up having to transition to another med, which I am now about to begin weaning off of as well. I'm hoping to be free of all benzos within a year.

To be clear, I am not anti-pharmaceuticals or anti-medical-establishment. I rely on a blood pressure medicine without which I'd still be spinning with vertigo attacks, and I work as a transcriptionist specializing in medical market research audio, so I know very well that modern medicine is in fact a miracle for many, and I appreciate it.

I appreciate the strides that those in the medical industry make and I'm not going to throw shade at an entire industry just because of a few bad apples. I'd say 95% of the doctors and researchers that I transcribe are genuinely wonderful people who are trying to make a real difference for sick people, and I've got a much better impression of the entire medical industry since I've had that view into it since I began transcribing in 2011.

Having said that, I also know that there are some drugs that doctors are all too willing to prescribe without making the patient aware of the addictive potential and the difficulty in getting off of them. I never became addicted. I never took more than was prescribed. I was "the good patient." Yet getting off the drugs was next to impossible. Most of the way down, I was fine, and then I hit a brick wall. Depersonalization and derealization. Exponentially worse than the original anxiety that I was originally trying to treat. It was quite literally a waking nightmare.

This is a glimpse into how I was feeling at that moment in my life when I'd just begun to cut down, before I knew how bad it would even be. It doesn't detail what I spoke of above because it hadn't happened yet, and it veers off into the territory of strength over perceived weakness, recalling some comments from years past that seemingly did come into fruition, and yet I surpassed that prediction and grew stronger. A theme that runs through most of my work.

Please enjoy, and if you do, I appreciate your likes, comments, and shares. Here's hoping that the next chapter of this journey goes a bit smoother than the first.
 

The Weight of Your World

Things sure didn't turn out the way that I thought they would.
Here I am, smoking the past away, popping pills to numb the pain,
and realizing that it's time to embrace the mist of the cannabis
and kiss the pharmaceuticals goodbye.

I work in this industry
but it's killing me.
Hypocritical? Maybe.
But I can see both sides.
It's always gray—
never black, never white.

I leaned on a doctor and on a drug,
believing that they could save me from myself.
But the work that needed to be done
was on my mind and heart,
not on my body.

Yes, I did learn so much here.
Yes, I'm resolving the issues as I go.
Yes, the experience was valuable.
Yes, I'd trade it all for what was simple.

Someone once told my mother
that the real world would break me.
That she protected me too much
and that I'd never understand reality
or be able to live within it.

30 years later, it's broken me a time or two,
but if I could sit down and talk to her,
I think she'd see my strength
through the pieces that have healed.
I used to crack like kindling,
but now I bend and snap right back.

I still live by my own rules and in my own little world,
but I'm not dying under the weight of yours.