I start this space fresh with new hopes and desires. I am a writer who has plunged into recovery this past year with a severe detox from pharmaceuticals in March. My recovery has been nothing short of a miracle, with my mind and body ravaged with withdrawals and physical disabilities beyond my imagination. I do not know writing without the aide of drugs prescribed by my doctors. I was nothing more than a "licensed prescription junkie." Today, I am clear-minded and sober, doubtful of my creative abilities to fill this space with savory, sleek, prose which flies off my fingers onto the keyboard without a second thought. I am a writer, without their vice, no longer under the influence of drugs, propelled with the insanity which accompanies them.
The snow flies through the air on this late December day, as Christmas creeps up on me, with the silence of my thoughts, diminishing my ego's eye for the written word and creative thought. I am nine months into recovery and my mind has been silenced for the entire time, as my fingers have yearned to return to the keyboard, regaining the noise with which they speak through me to this blank page.
Blank pages have frightened me dearly in the last nine months as I have started and stopped on numerous occasions, sitting at my laptop and willing words to appear from my soul in the space before me.
Today I visited a psych-ward where I was not the patient. Such a new breath-taking experience, where I truly relished my new found sobriety and health. It is hard time of year to be in a hospital, but especially a psych hospital. I can't imagine Christmas on a psych-ward where you are away from your home and normalcy. I will do my best to bring a new Christmas to the ward on Monday, and everyday up till then I will continue my brave face and bring my new body and mind which sits on the other side of mental illness.
Corey Britton
BORN THIS WAY-2K17
