We Didn't Find Jesus in the Prozac

RULE #1: Don’t ever say that you’re not crazy. You’re already here, so there’s no use, and any protesting you do will just make you look crazier. Trust us.

RULE #2: Remember, from this moment on, it’s them against us. It will be this way for the rest of your life. Don’t ever get to thinking you can change it. Once you fall down the crazy hole, there’s no going back.

RULE #3: Take your pills, or don’t, but whatever you do, don’t make a fuss about them. If you’re worried they’ll suck the life out of you, they will, but it’s only temporary. If you think they’ll cure you, they won’t. We didn’t find Jesus in the Prozac, and you won’t either. Some of us found him in the valium, though.

RULE #4: Every emotion you display from here on out will be classified as a symptom. Your options are to either have fun with this and see how many new diagnoses you can get, or make yourself so numb and non-reactive that they leave you alone for the most part and tell you you’re in recovery. Being in recovery is the closest we ever get to normal. Some of us strive for it, but most of us think it’s more boring than death. Choose carefully.

RULE #5: Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just a vacation and that you’ll be back to your normal life soon. It will be tempting. You’ll try to make it out there in the normal world. You may succeed for a time. You’ll finish beauty school and get a job at a hair salon. You’ll go on dates. You’ll meet a nice man named Dave. In a few months Dave will ask you to move in with him. You’ll say yes. You’ll have a nice time together for a while. Until one day, he leaves his shoes in the middle of the floor, and you just can’t take it anymore. You lose it. Just for one moment. Just like everyone loses it from time to time when the burden of straws gets too heavy on their back. A normal hiccup. Except not for you. You don’t get to have normal hiccups. You get to have relapses. You get to have “You crazy bitch! I knew I should have never taken a chance on you. You’re sick. I bet you haven’t been taking your pills, have you?” You have, but it doesn’t matter, he won’t believe you. They never believe you. And suddenly, bam, you’re back here, in the land of the crazies, the place you mistakenly thought you were free from. The first shock is the worst. After that you get used to it. You learn to not expect any different.

RULE #6: Understand that this world was not made for us.

RULE #7: Reality is a home you do not belong to. It is a luxury they have that we don’t. And it is a luxury they all take for granted. They wake up in the morning and the light shines through their window, and they know it is the sun. (They never once think it could be hellfire). They go to the kitchen, open their fridge and start making some eggs. (They don’t think about how the texture of them feels like rubber and worry that they are dolls in a toy house being played with.) A friend calls them and says they have to cancel their plans for the day, and they say “okay, let’s take a raincheck.” (Their mind doesn’t flash to the razor blade in their shower and relish in how smoothly it will sink into their next patch of unmarked skin.) At night, they lock their door and turn the lights out. (Only once).

RULE #8: Do not try to get them to understand you. They won’t.

RULE #9: You will find belonging where you least expect it. You won’t find it in seminars or cold blue doctor’s offices. You won’t find it in clean white place settings or roaring parties full of drowning people. You will find it in an elevator, next to a man whose hand twitches like his bones are trying to break free from his skin. You will find it in the woman at the check-out counter, white scars peeking out from under her sleeves. You will find it in the mascara tear stains on the wadded-up tissues in a public bathroom. You will find it on a rooftop, noticing the footprints that were left here before, from others who were tempted to see it all from above. Glancing over the edge, you feel the residue of their desire to fling themselves feet-first into the world that was never theirs. It’s not enough to save you, but it’s enough to make you want to stay, if only to feel their presence a little longer — knowing them the way no one ever had before. You leave your own footprints on the way back.

RULE #10: We choose our freedom by learning to play along while knowing that it’s all bullshit. To them we’ll always be crazy, but we know the truth. We let them have their delusion. We let them judge us as we shake and we cry and we yell and we bare our feral teeth. At the end of the day, they’re the ones who are trapped. They may have their button-downs and their promotions, their flat-grass lawns and their refrigerators of family portraits, but inside all of them is an animal itching to break free. This is our biggest secret: the only difference between them and us is that we couldn’t keep it caged.

RULE #11: Each of us walks alone in our broken-down version of the house called reality. When it gets lonely — and it will — remember that the rest of us are out there. Tightening the loose floorboards and patching up the holes in the walls of our crumbling houses, hoping despite ourselves that it’s not too late to fix them up and make them homes. In brief moments, the most lonesome of rooms will be shared with the company of another. Hold on to these moments with everything you can.

RULE #12: This world was not made for us, so we make our own.