What He Saw

It took me two attempts to swallow the pills that night. The methadone was bad enough, but at least the tablets were small. The anti-depressants were huge, difficult to swallow. I spat and retched in the sink, staring at the white paste that remained, before washing it away. I tried again with another tablet. Finally it went down, though I gagged again. I washed it down with some more water and threw the rest of the glass down the sink. I had been on the pills for weeks now, but still I was unused to the feeling of taking one of each twice a day. The hardest part, however, was not the taking of the pills, not talking to the psychiatrist, not going for fortnightly checkups. The hardest part was walking around the house, and seeing him watching me. He would act normal, but when he thought I wasn't looking I often caught him with a worried look on his face, staring across the room. Sometimes I understood, sometimes I didn't. I knew I had lost weight and become scruffy and unkempt. That was getting better now. I actually had an appetite sometimes, and I had started caring about myself again. But then, why did he care? He had himself to worry about; I wasn't important. In the end I just accepted it, yet I still saw him staring sometimes and wondered what he was thinking. Whether he was thinking about me, trying to think of ways to help. He knew about the pills. He knew I was finding it hard. I wanted to deny anything was wrong, reassure him with a smile. But he saw what wasn't true. He saw everything.