4/90, control

This birth control is starting to feel like a cancer. The heat between my ears, the ringing, is intensified. The split, for the first month, felt manageable. The sound part of my brain still existed.

Not that I'd ever had much control of it anyway. I don't know why I flatter myself that way. This year was supposed to be different. I began praying for serenity, praying to calm myself down, doing yoga and staying centered and taking less on. I thought this was what brought it all on last time--the depression, the increased anxiety. It wasn't until months after stopping that I saw the commercial: It wasn't my fault. Their pill could do that to you.
I would say that it was a glorious year, the freedom to have my own hormone levels, to learn what it felt like to be in a body all my own again. There were moments where it felt that way, when I knew I was cheating and the regularity was stolen from the pills still soaking in my stomach for months. They did wear off, and we did pay the price for that.

The doctor didn't like me relying on my own body. It hadn't done it's job very well in the past, it was nearing the year mark, she said, when all of the residual perks would fade, and she didn't like to think about what my body could go back to.

If for no other reason, if I ignored the drowning in myself, the inability to get out of bed, I told her, I can't afford it. She ignored this, wrote the prescription for Wal*Mart, $10 a month for security. $10 a month to break the laws of my church, to feel like I was getting away with sin.

That first month went well, though. I felt great, happy even, clear. I could control the two parts of my brain--the self I was controlling; the emotions that weren't mine, that even at their most intense, in my screaming and blaming, I knew they were not a part of me.

So when you told me you had lunch with her, when you told me her life was falling apart and I imagined you being there for her, I was jealous. Yes, I, myself; my stomach tightened thinking of the comfort you could give her and where that could lead, even though I knew it wouldn't. I didn't react at first; I gave myself a chance to calm down. I remembered that you loved me, that before me there wasn't anyone, not in that way, not even her. You dated, but now you could say that was nothing; you were friends, and that was important. It would always be important.

But I felt the pill catch in my throat, the slight orange taste choking me. I woke up, afraid that you were sleeping with her; knowing this was impossible;, staring at the wall with cheeks coated in dried salt; feeling the heated, in-heat part of my brain chewing on everything else, destroying me.

You ask me to stop reacting this way, to stop fearing her, to stop looking at the ways we are both your type. And I can say I will do this. What I don't say, at least right away, is that the levels are up, and how it's all just transferring. That even if I stopped now and let my body try to go it alone, it would be months before I knew myself. That if I stop fearing this, I will not stop fearing. The irrationality will transfer; I will become a new kind of crazy.