The first week on the new medication was a quiet war inside Jacob’s body.The pills didn’t flatten him immediately. At first, they made him nauseous. His hands trembled, and his heart beat irregularly, like it was trying to remember its proper rhythm. He floated through his days in a fog, distant from his own thoughts, like he was watching life through a pane of dirty glass.
Emily checked in daily. She pretended it was casual—sending him videos, articles, dumb memes—but Jacob knew she was monitoring him. Waiting for signs. Ready to catch him if he slipped.
He resented her for it, even as he clung to it.
The hardest part was the silence in his head. The music that usually played on a loop—his internal drive, his energy, his manic hum—was gone. The silence was suffocating.
One evening, Jacob sat alone on his couch, his fingers drumming restlessly against his knee. He had no big plans. No grand projects pulling him forward. Just stillness. A terrifying, heavy stillness.
Is this who I am now?
Just this dull, medicated ghost?
His phone buzzed. A message from Sofia.
Hey. Emily told me you’re trying. I’m proud of you. Want to meet up for coffee?
Part of him wanted to ignore it. Part of him wanted to see her immediately. Instead, he stared at the screen, paralysed by indecision. The medication was supposed to smooth the edges, but now he felt blunted, as though life’s colours had bled out into grey.
When they finally met, Sofia studied him carefully across the table. Her eyes were warm, but cautious.
“You seem… steady,” she said.
Jacob smirked bitterly. “Yeah. That’s what everyone wanted, right? Steady Jacob. Quiet Jacob.”
She frowned. “That’s not what I wanted.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Jake, I didn’t fall for the manic version of you. Or the broken one. I just… I wanted the real you. The one who’s present. The one who doesn’t disappear.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t even know who that is.”
Sofia reached across the table, resting her hand on his. “Then maybe now’s your chance to find out.”
It was a simple thing to say. But it stuck.
For the next few days, Jacob sat with the discomfort of stability. He went to his appointments. He took the pills. He forced himself to eat, to shower, to leave the apartment. The world didn’t rush at him anymore, but he started to see its details again—the cracks in the sidewalk, the rhythm of strangers passing by, the soft hum of a city that had kept moving without him.
His creativity didn’t vanish. It just slowed. Became manageable. Less like a wildfire and more like a steady flame.
Still, the temptation gnawed at him. The urge to throw the pills away. To feel everything again. To let the mania roar back to life.
Some days, the urge almost won.
But for now, he fought. For Emily. For Sofia. For himself.
The war wasn’t over. But he was still in it.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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