Take Me

Artist Statement

I quit this drug cold without telling anyone. That is what put me in the hospital. Now it spells out its own command. Olanzapine. White 10mg tablets glued in block letters. TAKE ME.

I stopped taking olanzapine without telling anyone. That decision gave me a manic episode, grandiose thoughts, manic spending, an ER visit I walked out of because I was terrified they would keep me. The peach olanzapine tablets in Starting Over were a different dose of the same drug. These are the white 10mg ones. Here they are again, intact, uncrushed, spelling the instruction I refused to follow.

The label sits in the lower right corner, crumbled and wrecked, barcode hanging off. You read "Olanzapine Tablets USP 10mg" before you even parse the letters. Then TAKE ME lands because you already know exactly what is being taken. The drug commands itself. Clinical white against organic decay.

This is internal resistance vs external command. My mind telling me not to while everyone around me, including the pills themselves, says take them. I live that standoff every day. There is no resolution here. There is only the command, spelled out in the thing itself, staring back at me.

Third in the medication series. Starting Over was the acute night. Just Fucking Sleep was the chronic years. This one is the instruction.

Part of the medication series. See also Stable Enough to Bloom, Starting Over, Just Fucking Sleep, and My Mind Was Never Mine To Control.