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.
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