Lithium Lollipop

The doctor asks me if I ever hear voices and, at first, I wasn't sure how to answer him.
Do demons squeal at me billowing smoke out of the radio and car vents telling me to strip naked and stalk the president?
No. But my own whispers death licking hot condensation on my neck, like that scene in alien.
It tells me I'm worthless and the world is a gun pointed at my head, chamber spinning like russian roulette.
They don't hiss at me through speakers they sit smoking a cigarette in a pair of Nike sneakers and a t shirt that says "Just do it."
But, I tell him no, I don't because I know the truth will see me a ghost, broken and alone, drooling and sucking on a lithium lollipop, rocking in a corner behind the locked door of the 2nd floor psych ward. A dungeon where crazy is locked away to marinate in its pain forgotten and rotting, chained to a societally acceptable reality.

So I lie.

He asks me without even looking up if I have a desire to kill myself.
I can tell he is looking for a cry for help to fall into his lap, but he's not looking THAT hard.
These are questions he has to ask, you understand.
He's got to check off those boxes. So if something bad does happen, x marks the spot.
I say no and he clicks the mouse a bit. And I resent vermin in my appointment. I wrestle with the idea that suicide has anything to do with desire.
But he knows I have no desire to end up shuffling down anti septic hallways in s haze of overmedication, out of hope and out of my mind.

So I lie.

"Are you eating and drinking regularly?"
Um...actually...
"That's great."
He pretends he can't see my veins.
Yes. I'm eating and drinking believe me. He does.

"Are you sleeping?"
He ignores the purple bags under my eyes.

So I lie.

I lie about my illness because people believe it's a decision.
People don't have sympathy what they can't see.
They understand the gnarled hands of arthritis but not what it is to be anxious or depressed.
I wear a mask. A cast holding a cracked smiling face to a screaming brain.

"Great. See you in 30 days."