I like the idea of weight as measured in units of force, as gravity pinning something down to the earth. According to Newton's third law--all forces occur in pairs, each opposite and equal in magnitude--when a person falls, the earth falls in the opposite direction. Or, I suppose, each leaps to meet the other.
When you fall and you feel the earth is rising rapidly toward you, you're right. It is.
And (to misappropriate Flannery O'Connor's use of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's phrase) everything that rises must converge.
As my meds and I converge every morning and evening. 750.5 milligrams is the amount of medication I take in the morning. When I take the 5 pills that weigh so little, they pin me down to an inescapable truth: taking psychotropic (qu'est-ce que c'est?), psychiatric medications will be a lifelong ritual, part of my and Sam's management of my incurable, major mental illness.
When a person is depressed, she can fend off bad decisions by deciding to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow might be better. When I take my meds, I remember that, at some unpredictable time, tomorrow will be much, much worse.
I remember that the same is true for you, dear reader.
So, to lift our moods, let's hear something from Ms. Dickinson, from her posthumous Complete Poems 1924):
Today or this noon
She dwelt so close,
I almost touched her;
Tonight she lies
Past neighborhood--
And bough and steeple--
Now past surmise.
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