Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor
Self-Subduing and Repressing Implement

Four months before our wedding
he told me he couldn’t do it
unless I got my shit together.
(he may have used nicer words; I don’t know; I was drunk)

and thus I spent the entirety of our marriage (except for the 1st, planned, pregnancy)
on a drug that took deliberate aim
at my overly-emotional
emotions.

For sixteen years
I warily observed an existence
that didn’t require a box of tissues at a movie (happy or sad),
that didn’t include yelling matches with strangers in a bar over a baseball game,
that was so very balanced
and so very dulled.
Like watching life through a closed window,
when my grandma died
I felt the tears somewhere behind the pharmaceutical barricade
but they never broke loose.

Mere months before the demise of my marriage,
I ended my time on SSRIs
and then upended
everything.
I spent the early months retraining in feeling:
scream-crying along with Taylor Swift lyrics;
burying grief under a smile for my children;
soaring with pride and bliss as I wandered down new paths;
setting free the deluge of unnamed emotions that had never dissipated,
but was simply penned in
by the pills.

I still run from it sometimes
but as you kiss my forehead and tease, “So emo…”
I let myself get carried away again
in this tide I once knew
and it feels
like coming home.

6/9/26