"April 2018" - Olivia Cama

Olivia Cama is a junior Creative Writing Major at Emerson College minoring in Health and Society. She writes for Her Campus Emerson and loves writing short stories, novels and poems in her spare time. In what other time is left, she ice skates, coaches ice skating and bakes desserts. 

This piece is about a time where I was especially vulnerable in a hospital setting. I went into the ER for a migraine and was given medication that gave me a "psychotic reaction" which had long lasting effects. I struggle with mental health: OCD and anxiety, and the reaction made all of these much worse. Now, I am completely better, but this poem is the place where I have organized my thoughts and few memories of the event.

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April 2018

Olivia Cama

I am letting her down.

It our white table, gown dinner and 

I sit distracted, eyes tracing symbols on the wall

And fingers clenched writing my will 

Everything is loud and bright

But I can’t tell her that,

Until we walk outside the restaurant

And I don’t even know what city I am in

At the ER, the wrong name leaves my lips

And the chairs are far too hard,

Even though I’m not sitting at all

They say they will give me something for the pain

And it flows into my veins,

A sickly yellow and

We wait for it to anchor me to the ground

I’m too heavy.

The ants climbing on the hairs on my arms

Tell me to sit up,

But my chest tells me to lay down

My dad is on the phone. 

“Daddy, I’m scared. What’s happening to me?”

He doesn’t know.

Across the ward, a boy screams

And is held down with white straps.

They just need him to breathe, He wants his parents too

This yellow is too yellow.

It will make my blood orange

And make the salt smell like citrus

The nurse says this is normal.

The cars whiz by outside, 

And my bare toes sink into the concrete.

Maybe someone can take me home.

The nurses pull me back inside, 

And they flush the yellow out with clear

Until everything is red normal

A police car takes me home

And I want to say, 

“I’m sorry. I let you down.”

But I don’t remember why she matters to me

10:58, I’m on the floor of 2 Boylston

And a girl with familiar eyes feeds me crackers

I can’t keep down,

And sets me in bed, 

Legs careening off the side like a broken turkey

When I wake up,

I can feel my heart down to my toes and

It just gets slower the faster I run.

“Daddy, I’m scared. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

It takes three weeks to go home to my own body,

My telltale heart a steadfast reminder 

Of how slow the world really is

If you stand still enough.

She says I didn’t let her down.

That her job is to be here for me.

I wouldn’t even be there for me

Last night, I asked about the boy fighting everyone in sight.

“What boy? That was you all along.”

Daddy, I’m scared.

That I’ll wake up in a hospital bed,

Police car,

And not know who I am.

That I’ll never feel truly at home in my head again, 

And everything will always be orange

But, with each day, the orange darkens, 

And maybe normal red doesn’t have to be the goal