try coming off my pills. we reduced it slowly, five milligrams at first to see if any of my symptoms would resurface and they booked me in for an appointment a month later to check on my progress. i thought i was doing fine i didn’t notice anything particularly wrong except my stalkers had returned to hunt me, regurgitated from the depths of the rat-infested city i call home. they had started watching me in my house again noting every move i made, every thought i tried not to think, every curve and angle of my tired sagging body. but i didn’t realise this until i spoke with my case worker, didn’t realise that i had slipped back into this way of thinking as easily as putting on my own skin. and so, they increased my medication again, until my clarity about the clockwork of society blurred and i felt comforted about everything and nothing at all because either i am being helped or my insight is being tampered with for the sake of a blind world that digs cosy pits for itself to fall into, pits heated by the warmth of the hell they call obliviousness.
Martina Kontos is a writer, mental health warrior, cookie addict and social bushwalker living in Adelaide, South Australia. Her aim is to help the world better understand mental illness, one piece at a time. She is published in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Nonconformist Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly, and elsewhere.
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