Prescribed Pills

Today’s Forecast: Partly Sarcastic with a slight chance of pessimism and a thirty percent chance of honesty.

If anyone were to ask, which they won’t, I would tell them that it wasn’t entirely unexpected. A surprise, yes, but certainly not unforseen. I had thought she’d needed something for years. Wellbutrin, Prozac, Lithium . . . at one point I was even convinced she needed an anti-psychotic like Clozapine. So, opening her purse and seeing the little white Rx page with an illegible signature and the word Seroquel written strongly and underlined twice didn’t throw me off balance. So, what did?

The list of doctors at the top of the page in off-black Bickley Script print.

She was seeing a psychiatrist. She’d always sworn she would never seek the care of a mental health professional. Come to think of it, just last weekend she’d pronounced to all who would listen: "I’m not crazy, I’m Southern. There are no crazies or psychotics down here; we’re called eccentrics or unusual. I don’t need drugs, I need a stiff drink. Now how bout you fetch me a mint julep, sugah."

I could have confronted her. Pulled her small white paper with it’s damning print out of her patent leather bag and waved it in her smug face. Called her a liar and a fruitcake and been justified in doing so. But I didn’t. Why?

So that maybe, just maybe, she would fill the prescription and get the help she seemed to finally realize she so desperately needed.