Stable Enough to Bloom

Artist Statement

Lamictal keeps me stable. The printout from the pill bottle is the flower.

I took the paperwork that comes with my mood stabilizer, the dense tiny-print warnings nobody reads, the side effects list, the legal ass-covering, and folded it into a bloom. Spray painted it red and yellow and mod podged it onto the canvas. Crumpled glossy red, yellow-brown center, sitting on a field that burns orange-red at the bottom and goes deep purple at the top. The flower breaks past the top edge of the canvas. It does not stay inside the frame.

That is the whole point. The thing prescribed to contain me became the thing that grows. They gave me paperwork to warn me what the drug might do to me. I turned it into something alive. The stabilizer bloomed despite itself.

Do not mistake this for gratitude. The medication series is the war. This one is what happens when the drugs actually hold, when the chemistry sits still long enough for something to grow out of the paperwork. Stable enough to bloom. Not cured. Not fixed. Not thankful. Just stable enough.

Part of the medication series. See also Starting Over, Take Me, Just Fucking Sleep, and My Mind Was Never Mine To Control.