If- Nina G. Jones Page 0,55

said.

“Then don’t.”

ASH

The evening Bird found me on the street, after days of drifting and generally feeling like shit, was when I decided I was done with running away from her.

Maybe it was selfish, because I knew stuff she didn’t. But she was convincing. She made me believe that somehow, together, we could fix me. Despite the sadness that draped over me those three days that I wandered aimlessly, sleeping on park benches and in alleyways, that entire time, I was just slowly finding my way back to her. She had become my beacon, with her lavender glow shining through the fog of depression.

I knew that finding myself would be hard. I had gone up and come down, and I wanted to just remember what it was like to be Asher, before the meds. But I was stuck in a hole. I wanted to see Bird in all the colors, and I wanted to sense the world as vividly as I used to. I wanted the energy to finish the rooftop project. I didn’t want to worry about trying to paint the smallest of details in a piece, only to be thrown off by the sudden shaking of my hand.

I needed a reset. I wanted to climb out of the depth as fast as I could. I knew nothing could get me out of the bottom faster than stopping my medication.

I hadn’t been great about the meds lately, but I was on them. I started to think they were a pointless attempt at making me level. It had been almost two years since the breakdown and maybe I could be fine again without them.

I was sick of being tied down to a bottle of pills. I was sick of the check-ins to monitor my lithium levels. Even living on the street, I was never really free because of them. I was a slave to the very bottle of pills that was putting a damper on the two things that made me who I was: my synesthesia and my art.

I had lived most of my life without medication and I had been fine. Maybe it was time to try life without it again. Maybe it was the meds that were holding me back, like some sort of crutch that wouldn’t allow me to sprint.

They threw a wrench in the cycle of vision to canvas that I had relied on for most of my life. I had so much living to do. I wanted out of this medicinal alteration. I could do this. I would do this. For Bird. For Sarah.

So that night, after Bird fell asleep, I got my bottle of pills and I emptied the few remaining ones down the toilet. I was going to be the real Ash, no longer viewing the world in its ordinary dullness.

I could do this.

ASH

I WAS RIGHT.

It had been four weeks since Bird found me on the street, back to my old ways. I let her think it was some kind of flu that I had succumbed to from the lack of sleep. It wasn’t hard to convince her. In many ways, that’s what the low felt like: my body and head ached, and all I wanted to do was sleep.

During the third week, the fog started to roll away on its own. I didn’t need the medicine. I just needed Bird and my art. Bird helped me forget the guilt. She filled me with feelings I was afraid to feel. All this time I feared I might hurt her, that I might lose control. But I was starting to learn to funnel those high feelings into my art. That was the healthy way to do it, not these numbing meds.

Bird was off with teaching the little ‘uns, as she called them, and I decided to venture out for a walk. It had been a while since I had done that, spending most of the past few weeks in a miserable fog.

The sun beamed on my skin, and it felt like life was being fed into me. Weeks ago, the sun would have felt like an annoyance, a reminder of how good I should feel. Nothing feels worse than knowing something should feel good, but instead feeling nothing at all.

This time, I stayed away from 5th.

A child screamed, not a tantrum, just the way toddlers like to test out their vocal cords with a random screech. A blast of white exploded and disappeared just as quickly.

I walked a little further, past a construction crew. The