My dad left when I was two and my mother died three months later. She killed herself and left me. She’s a c***, what kind of mother leaves their two-year-old son alone in the world. I will never forgive her for that, not ever no matter how old I get no matter how healthy I become because clearly I’m not worth sticking around for. That’s when it started the feelings of worthlessness hopelessness like I was drowning in the air I breathed and suffocating with the air that left me just like everyone else. My aunt took me in after my mom left. She was my dad’s sister and she knew as much about his whereabouts as me a two year old did. She loved me like I was her own maybe because she couldn’t have children but either way she brought me into her home made me a room and eventually moved so I could go to a school where I wasn’t bullied. I adore my Aunt Veronica she is almost like my mom in a way; I sure as hell like her more.

Aunt Vee noticed something was wrong when I was four. I was being in where I should be in my speaking and whatever other bullshit little kids need to know. I didn’t ever want to leave the house I hated pre-school and didn’t talk to anyone and when it was time for drawing I did nothing but write the one word I knew how to write, carrot, over and over again. We went to anyone we could. She loves me and I love her so she always tells me only the best for you Tristan.

We got a diagnosis by the time I was six like it only took two years of f***ing it up and trying new pills on me like a lab rat. Every single one was an SSRI I suppose those are what treat severe depression. First it was Lexapro that helped the depression but made me eat everything in sight. Then it was Celexa, which did the absolute opposite; I barely ate anything. By now I was nine and we were desperate because I was starting middle school soon and drugs take forever to test out. I was a kid and couldn’t take pills so every morning at breakfast Aunt Vee would put think nasty ass clear stuff in a glass of water mixed it and made me drink. They told us Prozac might be the one it worked for so many people before me it had been tested out and had proven results and in most cases the side effects out weighed the good that could come from this magical little drug.  It worked at first and just like every other drug before they were to increase the dose slowly and work up to what I needed to be at, up and up each month. I drank my happiness like other kids did chocolate milk.

The faux happiness didn’t bother me so much as the fact that it was always a big secret. But either way when the morons went to increase it and I started taking more my head went to s***. Honestly I didn’t get out of bed for days. I had awful migraines and was sick at least six days a week. So off what was supposed to work and onto the next I guess. Just like all the rest. By now I was about to start middle school. Aunt Vee never seemed to have any financial struggles but then again her work as a pharmacist paid well. They slowly took me off the Zoloft while frantically trying to find something to use next. None of the SSRIs had worked so far but they said there were two left in the division and would I want to try them. As of then I was suicidal cutting on the daily and didn’t kill myself because Aunt Veronica would have no one and I couldn’t bear to leave the woman who raised me even though I was not hers.

I was in seventh grade by the time I could try the next medication. Prozac yet another magical little pill. Prozac was like a gift from god. It was certainly not a cure all like I was hoping. It didn’t bring my mom back or my dad, it didn’t make me a good student and it didn’t make me have friends or make anyone understand me. It did make the mood swings stop. It made the voices and the thoughts of suicide go away. It made me be able to have real smiles and good days more frequent. It didn’t make everything better I had good days great days bad days and just down right s***ty days. But I wont give up. I can’t give up.  The Prozac was the one. Like how when you put on your wedding dress for the first time you are just supposed to feel that its right, well that’s how the Prozac felt. Today I’m still on Prozac although now I’m on 80mg. I’m fourteen and starting high school soon. Maybe high school will be harder on me but I think I have proven I can get through just about anything.  I know that this is my life and I have to do it my way, my mother didn’t think I was worth it but I do. Because you know what I’m amazing. I don’t care what the kids at school think because you know what in a few years I will never see them again they will be a distant memory like a dream I had long ago, or I guess it would be more of a nightmare. Aunt Vee is doing great she’s following her dreams of being a writer. She doesn’t say so but I think they were cut short by me. She has been through hell and back with my mother and fathers death not to mention all my s***. I love her so much for everything she’s one. Maybe one day I wont be on drugs and I wont bee drinking my happiness but for now I am and that’s okay because what I am on now works but as I have learned in the future that could change and if it does oh well, because does it really matter what medicine I’m taking to make myself feel better. That is the story of my liquid happiness my cocktail of joy, of how I drink my happiness.