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Medicine

It used to be a good thing. My favorite thing.

Now it rakes at my eardrums, dull aching in my belly, snakes in my skull licking at my brain. It is harsh and shrill most of the time, but it has its other disguises—low, soft but teasing, tinny, sporadic—that’s when it’s at its worst. When it’s unexpected.

I’ve needed it ever since I was a child, hated it since the overdose. We are in a constant parasitic symbiosis.

Only crying gets rid of the effects. That’s not what the doctor told me, but I found it out on my own and I won’t tell him about it—I have a feeling it would be bad if I did. But the logic was easy enough to work out; they just cancel each other out.

One time, before I told him about my problem with it, the doctor even prescribed it to me.

Said it was better than any pill.

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