"Lithium" by Evanescence

"Lithium

Don't wanna lock me up inside

Lithium

Don't wanna forget how it feels without

Lithium

I wanna stay in love with my sorrow, oh

But, God, I wanna let it go"

I take lithium for mental health reasons and I need to say that this song accurately portrays how medications prescribed for emotional dyscontrol can affect our minds. Rather than actively making us feel better, they often debilitate our ability to express our feelings.

"Come to bed, don't make me sleep alone

Couldn't hide the emptiness, you let it show

Never wanted it to be so cold

Just didn't drink enough to say you love me"

When I had just started to treat my mental illness, one of the first medications I was prescribed by my doctor was fluoxetine. The emptiness was so painful it made my suicidal thoughts way more frequent and vivid than before. I didn't have more absurd intrusive thoughts, but interacting with people and with myself was so overwhelming all of the time... And now that I didn't have thoughts that weren't mine occupying my mind, I had those of my own that just. didn't. stop.

"I can't hold on to me

Wonder what's wrong with me"

After going back to therapy with my former psychologist, whom I have known since I was seven, I started to realize how legitimately crazy I was the whole time. I genuinely couldn't (and still can't) control my feelings and how I often react to them. I can feel when my emotions are all over the room and I just can't help it. They just overflow like fluids.

"Lithium

Don't wanna lock me up inside

Lithium

Don't wanna forget how it feels without

Lithium

I wanna stay in love with my sorrow, oh"

Taking medication is literally locking up inside. All of the overbearing emotional blockers do that, but it's worse if it isn't the correct medication, like fluoxetine was for me. When I'm on medication I'm just a beast inside a cage, where both the cage and the best are my mind.

 At some point, all of these feelings start to be consoling and warm. Like they are my own and myself. I can't truly see me without them, I don't know if I exist without it. 

"Don't wanna let it lay me down this time

Drown my will to fly

Here in the darkness I know myself

Can't break free until I let it go

Let me go"

I will only be genuine with my feelings when I'm allowed to be crazy. If I'm not destructive, disruptive, mean, obsessive, compulsive, and overall crazy, it isn't me. It looks like me, but it isn't truly.

"Darling, I forgive you after all

Anything is better than to be alone

And in the end I guess I had to fall

Always find my place among the ashes"

It feels way less overwhelming when I am surrounded by nothing. When I'm not even remotely interacting with others. When I look to the ceiling and it looks back at me. That's one of the reasons I like this song. Because it's the melancholy that coddles me like a baby (I am the baby).