Sometimes meds give my personality a “flat” affect. I hate that.

They have made me less creative, not able to write poems and short stories or draw. I was very good at art, as long as it wasn’t in color; I never worked well with color, but pencil, silverpoint, charcoal, black ink. I was really good at it though I usually had to work from an image (like a magazine model or a still life set up in the room, could not just imagine it). But the end result did always differ from the original, and usually it looked okay, even been for the small changes. I got so many awards for my art in high school. I still have some of it, though my mom accidentally lost my 2 best pieces of work. I stored them separately when I left for college and then never really lived with my parents again. She found some of the other artwork. I need to photograph it and upload it.

I am sad I cannot write the way I used to. I carried a pen and notebook everywhere. I was rarely without them. Laptops were years and years away, let alone tablets and smartphones.

I miss that I started off so promising - excellent, good in all my subjects and a good writer and artist.

I miss what my life could have been, but I was changed by the ED, by the bipolar hitting hard in my mid20s, by PTSD, by a crazy shooting have nothing to do with me other than a shooter with a lousy aim (causing severe anxiety and panic).

So I don’t know. Meds have changed me. So has life.