Push Down Then Turn
The pills that made me forget reminded me
I sat eye-level to a new doctor, one who was eager to help get to the bottom of my decades-long relationship with migraines. I’d rattled off historical information — my own and that of my family — along with a carefully copied list of current medications and supplements.
I relayed that I’d been tested for and found to have that thing…the thing that prevents me from properly absorbing B vitamins, and that I’d switched to the methylated versions of each — I called them “prechewed”.
She laughed.
She ticked off a list of other treatment medications, asking whether I’d tried any of them previously and whether they worked. Most not only didn’t work, they produced such side effects that I was afraid to take them if I was alone, or worse, alone with my kids at home. One made me violently ill, throwing up within a few minutes of taking it. One made my face feel as though all the bones were being crushed. One made me struggle for breath.
She asked about my preventive medication, and I told her it did seem to work, but I wasn’t in love with the side effects, including losing my hair, the inability to recall names from my short term memory, and that my skeleton, particularly my spine, felt broken. Constantly.
We made a plan to swap out my preventive. She asked whether I’d ever taken a particular drug. It sounded familiar, but I was sure I had not.
She jotted down the instructions for transitioning from one to the other, arranged for a referral to a neurologist, and I agreed to come back in a month to report how things were going.
When the night came to begin the new preventive drug, I did as instructed, reviewed the label as I filled my water glass from the fridge, pushed down on the cap, and turned to open.
Along with the cascade of tiny pellet-sized pills came a flood of memories.
Memories I pushed down.
Memories of nights I didn’t fully remember. Memories I chalked up to nightmares until I got a call one day.
“He drugged you. I’m sorry. You probably never knew.”
She was at the tail end of her own failing marriage to my ex-husband’s friend. (The ex-husband of part 6 of my gun series fame, if you’re keeping track.) She’d been in the basement doing laundry and overheard their conversation through the vents. Her husband, frustrated with the lack of intimacy from her, my ex-husband offering him advice. He advised him to do what he’d done:
“Just drop a sleeping pill in her drink. Or, like I did, her headache pills made her tired, so I just crushed up about four of those fuckers in her glass and she’d zonk right out. I could do whatever I wanted. She just slept through the whole thing.”
I was already out of the relationship when she told me. I knew that he’d taken advantage on some particularly boozy occasions, once there was evidence he had to admit to. But I had no idea that he routinely and actively drugged me without my knowledge.
Have I mentioned we lived in one of those states where raping your wife wasn’t a thing?
I had stopped taking those pills when I discontinued my treatment with the doctor prescribing them, the one who routinely belittled me for unrelated things, such as opining that I should stop coloring my hair because it made me appear to be submitting to patriarchal ideals, all while she was doing a routine PAP.
And so the years went on — fifteen or so anyway — and I continued pushing down. Pushing down the memories of him, of what he did, and any recollection of ever even taking this medication, the one designed to minimize the effects of my headaches, the one that cut my risk of stroke.
And only just now have I turned. I turned and it opened and came flooding out. And I had to consider the weight of the reminders against the benefit this tiny pill provides.
I’m in a different place now, one absent an untrustworthy partner. I know that no matter how loosely my pajama bottoms are tied, I’ll wake up in the same condition, un-sexed unless we both want to be.
I am hopeful that with each passing night as I tip that amber container into my palm, I can replace the bad memories with good.
I am due for a refill.
