I started taking Prozac and now I can’t write
In the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes," there's a comic where Calvin is prescribed medication and it erases his imaginary friend, Hobbes, and just shows Hobbes as a regular stuffed animal - no longer his best friend, just stuffing held together by thread.
I started taking Prozac a month ago and it has made me not want to write - my imaginary world, kind of - gone.
Here's something: I was at the mall the other day and walked into a shoe store selling Doc Martens. I did it on a whim. The sales lady was really working me, telling me certain styles of Doc Martens would go well with the dress I was wearing. But I only had eyes for the classic fit. I wanted them, and I bought them. A simple transaction.
But it's how the Doc Martens made me feel. It's how they gave me a new persona, like I could be someone cool, worth knowing.
And I guess that's what writing was for me (is for me?). The act of creating a persona that people might want to know, an act of image, of creative outlet.
And as I sit here, full of Prozac, I have to wonder how I can recreate myself in this image. One of health, one of wholeness, one of newness.
My whims turned into prose, and not erased by pills.