"Take one tablet by mouth every day in the evening."
"Take two tablets by mouth every day."
"Take four capsules by mouth every day four times a day."

Forced OCD is the only way to fully understand. It is never intentionally laid upon a person that their life will be placed into the hands of capsules smaller than a fly. Grateful does not do the justice of explaining how helpful these fly-sized oval shaped lifelines are. I could go months without taking them and feel fine but the fact that their are internal reactions that go unnoticed is terrifying. Russian roulette with a case or bottle of pills. Too many cause side effects that are worse than the issue they try to resolve but also many of them cause no side effects and therefore going without them for a few days won't hurt, right?

Fast forward three months after not taking these vessels of life and my doctor reads back the results of blood being drawn. An instant sickness straight to the lowest point of my stomach sits like lead in the back of an iron barrel pressed up against my head. But who is holding the cool embrace of the steel? It could not be myself for I have not done anything wrong. I just went a few months without my prescriptions. It is me, however, gripping the trigger of this weapon caused by forces known as genetics and random occurrences. These medications keep me alive and when absent it is only myself to blame. In this morbid scenario, I am the victim but also the murderer of my own death in a courtroom surrounded by medicine bottles, tablets, capsules and prescriptions that give instructions on how to stay alive.

I used to ask "why me?", "Why do I have this disease?", "Mom why do I have to take pills but the other kids do not?" Now I follow the letters on each bottle as if they were the only pieces of literature allowed in my library. What many do not understand is that a pharmaceutical library contains books and research done by professionals about each drug but my pharmaceutical library is a collection of ways to live. I am not addicted or obsessed with an unreachable high that some pills carry within them but rather obsessed with living. Obsessed with waking up the next morning to look myself in the mirror another day with color in my flesh. I refuse to become as white as the encapsulated lifeline I take every day, four times a day.

Do not feel sympathy for me because I do this. I do it for the same reason you wake up everyday and leave the house. To live a normal life as best as I can outside the cabinet that contains my fountain of youth. My mirror is used as a curtain to shade the reality of how I am alive with a normal and familiar face that can live outside of the life preserved behind it.