Stephanie Leonard

THE SICKNESS

In 2009 I took the pills swallowed them whole, they were multicolored capsules each revealing a secret. I took them with a glass of water that glistened in the sun like quartz crystal, impressions of rainbows streaming in the water. The sickness this was beginning of trauma. Colors so gentle and soft bobbled up and down with the cup with such immense beauty it stunned my eyes. The sick color prisms danced on glass. They were so free it looked like individual souls floating in my cup. They where supposed to make my bipolar at ease. Sickly it couldn't put fire to a candle or wick. It was like there wasn't any flame to make things sizzle. The doc was under the weather that prescribed me these pills I had never been on, and dosage was high I started to cry for no reason. Oh sick, I felt so sick like this was just an irritation to my social existence. I never knew it was because of my disorder that was on border line. I was Sick but still compatible. I began to get moody like Oscar the Grouc,h spending my days in waste. The stench started to linger around everyone I touched. I had become King Midas with rubbish and rueful touch. I started to feel funny my world began to change and revolve spinning like a dark twister of mystery. Sick would sink in quicksand but healthy would walk on toes over the quicksand like walking on water. I started to have side effects from the pills they given me. First when I was sick I saw with my gigantic eyes that were bigger than the illness, an emerald Martian at the toaster. To my s urprise I knew that that sometimes my imagination sometimes caused reflections of the fun house. I looked in to the mirror and I saw myself in a upside down sort of way my face and legs were all displaced. It was Sickening to me. It was warning me of the precursor that was on its way. Occasionally I felt the immense pressure of people's thoughts and they crammed information into head like when I studied for a test. Could they hear what I was thinking inside my head? People said I was crazy but I believed I had a little ESP. Could I be a physic or sickly? I read people like a book. I also saw horror images and believed I wasn't mortal but dead, like I was one ghoul girl or a vampire that was immortal and pale. My parents took me to the tranquil place so I wouldn't go insane instead I hummed morbid melodies and picked a bullet out of the mud. I felt like I was just stuck in a bottomless pit that was the sickness. I felt I was bullet buried so long ago because I destroyed humanity and tranquility. But then realized I was not a bullet or a weapon of mass destruction. I was a cop who preserved public safety in blue uniform; I was catcher of mischievous sprites in my head, pesky little sprites that caused my thoughts to think dreaded things. Still Sick I put them in jail behind the bars of lies. So to get them out of my mind I took my sickness to my therapist and asked for answers seeking advice like a hurt wounded sparrow. Where was love and peace I used to feel? Why I couldn't find my hero? I felt like I caused accidents and storms. I thought it ran through my blood like I was Mother Nature, and I could choose the fate of bugs to live or to die? I realized I was sick but I was smart to seek help. I didn't want my world to be hailing so I got on new meds, and today I feel like it helps my head and my sickness. I still write. I'm soothed and not having the blues. I know I handle it when I get sick. Watch me light a match to the candle and endure the dark whatever it may be because I know the way to success from turmoil and how to make a match light without flame I also now how to create my destiny and to turn a sickness into greatness .

I pour the tea stepping in the kettle
I smell the aromatic spices and sugared pixie dusted vanilla
Drinking from a tiny teacup
I reminisce about what makes a girl turn into a woman
Do you remember the days girls when we, played with baby dolls
Caring about them like they were are own
Trying on mothers makeup and jewels
We wanted to beautiful like swans
Mature and elegant elongated on
The pond that glitters like a glass of bubbling champagne
Why did we fold our napkins on our lap and pay attention to small fine points of music culture and art?
We walked on are tiptoes like ballerinas trying not disrupt the beauty and patterns of earth.

I watched mother do the dishes scrubbing her worries away , I watched her cook fine and articulate herbed and seasoned. Meals that sat on our pallets for days, she did all house work with out ever a complaint. I started to grow and blossom like a fine specimen but something is missing I believe. I stare in my teacup at the cavern of blackness in my cup I have absent thoughts about who I wanted to be. I didn't want to be a sophisticated contemporary piece of art. I wanted to be realistic free. I wanted to be different. I wanted to a girl who liked to get rough and dirty and stained in mud like a swine. I had no such luck with pretty frilly Cinderella gowns with glints of silver and gold and the notorious glass slippers. I rather wear a sport jersey and jeans and converse sneakers. I rather speak out of term with facts I learn, than sit back and pace myself well the teacher calls on me. I rather not be beautiful and catch a man eyes, but a terror and shutter to a man. I decide the only way to break free of women I've been molding in to all these years is to smash what I have become. I look at the teacup this who I am pretty, prudent, and prissy I crush the teacup in my hands. The boiling liquid hits my hand the porcelain fair pieces break into portions finally I'm set free.

Stephanie Leonard began writing when she was thirteen. She has been published in USA Magazine and on The Telegram blog. She has been diagnosed with Biopolar, OCD, and a nonverbal and a right brain impairment. She continues discovering her inner self and secrets about herself to help guide herself to happiness.