by Jyl Anais Ion

I ground down in my Self,
the one I thought
had gone the way of all things
when I paid for your stories,
to help make sense of my pain.

Those days I washed up on your shore,
I was trying to put myself back together
when your therapy rearranged me
and then your medicine destroyed me.

I paid for your philosophy.
I paid you to help me.
I paid you with my life.

You told me you could help,
that the pills would
and then you drained my life out
slowly, over the next sixteen years.
Well, I returned home to myself
unmedicated and
found an answer
I sought with you
all those years you called me sick,
when I was already whole.

The effects of your pills poured cement
over my self-authority, until
I pried off the heavy glass
layered between
access to a full range of emotions,
memory, my identity
without your permission.
Now, I am reclaiming ground.

I sat across from you in that
English racing green leather chair
with brass rivets, and said “No.”
It sounded like silence
when that was all I could afford.

Your patients’ best interests get in the way
of profits, when health is what you reap
instead of sow.
Now, your white coats and fancy medical degrees
are in my wake,
as I hit the ground and
run for my life,
because the only way back to myself is
away from you
and the cage you filled pill bottles with.

Incarceration through diagnostic code:
you MD
you DO
you PsyD.
You,
purveyors of poison for profit.

You who use Jupiter and his symbol
to represent the reward.
You decimated me
with chemical infused trojan horses.
Make no mistake
my womb doesn’t wander.

Research this:

barely four months off your “medicine”
my life force flooded back with a vengeance
that transcends your diagnostic criteria
and control.

I surrendered to my own body’s ability to heal itself,
grounded into
what you called fundamentally flawed,
said was wrong in as many ways
as you could fill your
textbooks
and history.

“Whatever you do,
don’t stop taking your medication.” you said

after the Prozac
and the Paxil
and the Buspar
after the Klonopin
and the Xanax
and the Brintellix
and the Trazadone
and the Zoloft
and the Protriptyline
and the Lamictal

After the Hydroxyzine
and the Cymbalta
and the Celexa.
all this time
you claimed to do no harm.

I backed up,
told you to back off.
I withdrew and
finally found the answer
on my own without you,
who were no solution.

Your kindness and good intentions
aren’t enough
when you do harm,
Psychiatry.

© 2015 Jyl Ion. All rights reserved.

Jyl Anais Ion is an artist and writer who works within the intersections of a variety of media. Originally from the Caribbean, she currently resides in the United States where she nurtures orchids and faces the blank page. Find her online at www.jyl-ion.com.