August is the final hurrah of Summer, and I do not begrudge it for this, but I am never in sorrow when I see this month depart into the past. This means that Autumn is swiftly approaching, and after spending the first half of this year in the tropics, I am ready for the cool embrace of Fall.

One of the biggest changes in my life recently has been the decision to begin antidepressant medication. I avoided doing this for years for a variety of reasons. I do not often take pills of any kind, even pain pills, and as a creative I have heard many a terrible tale of medication interfering with creativity. In the last year, it became increasingly clear that if I do not take yet another step in my mental health care journey, I am not going to survive myself. It was a crushing thing to admit. As someone who already faces a host of health concerns, adding medication of any kind, especially a hormonal medication that could derail other aspects of my health, was a difficult decision to make.

In the two months that I was steadily taking this medication, I had one week of night terrors followed by weeks of near bliss. It quite literally felt as though a benevolent force had reached down and taken all of the sharp and heavy clutter out of my mind and the corners of my body. Even while battling grief, I was able to function at a level I haven’t been able to in years. Then, about a month in, I realized I was tired. At first, it was just that, not enough sleep, getting used to a new work schedule, and lingering grief. Then it became a struggle to stay awake for more than an hour or two at a time without wanting to hop back into bed. I stopped writing, stopped painting, and couldn’t even focus enough to read.

So I stopped taking the medication, and within a week I had completed three paintings, read a book, returned to my novels, and had a self portrait photo shoot. I supposed this is all to say that healing, and mental health in general, is a journey. And while I knew this, while I feared this exact outcome, it has still been difficult to accept. Could I ever choose between being creative and being happy? For the creative person, it is not a choice so much as a painful ultimatum. What is life without the ability to create? Without it, life just becomes a matter of survival.

So onwards I go, onto the next adventure, seeking out the holy grail that will allow me to live a fulfilled, chemically balanced, creative life. 

Here are some words that came to me over the last month:

“We will get there”, you say to me/ as we wade together into the deep./ Do I dare believe you? You have a hand, pale and dripping, reaching out to me./ The horizon cuts you in half, but you look so alive.

We were never able to find the way to loving each other through all the pain. It had cast roots that had grown too deep, and we didn’t know how to navigate with the diseased earth that made up our childhoods. 

There is a wound dressed like a child that cannot be healed. It will not grow or forget, it can only cry and feed.

And here we are at Autumn’s gates.

Love, Ariel