Love & Lexapro

By Emma Alexis Woodard

If you’re brain doesn’t produce natural happy chemicals, store bought is fine! But the side-effects are abundant, and you’ll probably never tell anyone how you feel to their face…A chronicle of one poet’s time on the prescription anti-depressant Lexapro, including the ins and outs of all the things she wished she’d said. From falling in love to falling apart, from losing your mental stability to losing your religion, the struggles of complex human emotion are broken down into poetry and prose to give meaning to pain and make sense of it all. This book dives into the things the author could’ve said during her first real relationship, to the first woman she fell in love with, to all the men who let her down, and to the cult that held her and her happiness hostage for most of her early to mid-twenties. For every thorn, there’s a rose – and an ode to the people loved, eternally, by the author. Lovers, survivors, and artists, this book is for you. People healing, people wanting, people needing, this book is for you too. This book is for the ones who feel everything, and say nothing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669843221

Emma Alexis Woodard

Emma Alexis Woodard is hoping to find her peace by publishing this mass of emotion and medication. While this book is only the first of her’s to be published, she has been writing poetry and prose since she discovered rhyme. Woodard currently resides in small town California, where she is working on becoming an Art Therapist, with the tireless love and help of her cat Bella. As stated by a dear friend of the author, it is said that she “wouldn’t take Emma to a warehouse rave – wait no I would. Emma is the best”. While Emma herself cannot guarantee the validity of the label “best”, she certainly tries and tries and endlessly tries to be a good and kind person. It’s important to her that she find creative outlets to express her emotions, and she hopes that in some small way her writing can be a part of someone else’s love story or healing journey. As a January Aquarius, she’s an anal retentive and wrote this biography countless times whilst avoiding calls from her publisher…She’s trying to be better.

Book preview

Contents

Dedication

It Goes On

Circles

For Granted

Otter

Even If

In Eventuality

Idols

Humanity

Loss Can Only Be Felt

Gospel

Peyton

I Don’t Want to Reminisce with You

We Only Do Things in the Worst Way

Twenty-Four

Seabury

Six and Five

New Beginnings

Ellie

Post-Mormon Catholicism

Page 8

Katie

You Don’t Have a Car

Overwhelming

Being Alive

MST

Youth on LSD

On the Lamb

Hazing

Growing Pains

My Conscience is Clear

C

She’s So Lovely

On Being Yours

Fractals

Senses, in a Sense

Windowsill

Crowds

Champagne/Cocaine

Positioned

Trade Trade Trade

Utah

Always You Before Me

C Part 2

Written on a Wall

Weeks

December 2008

A Skyscraper

A-Romantic

An Explanation of Affairs

Crowned

Talking Back

Texas

She’s the Ash

On Being a Granddaughter

Elsie

Curiosities

Mother Mary Anew

On Grief

Endings

Having Faith

‘Tis Eventide

The Lost Apostle

Lexapro and Loneliness

Brain Fog

Non es Ad Astra Molis e Terris Via

Rings and Things

It Was a Panic Attack, Gina

In the City of Brotherly Love

Kevin Kline or Someone of the Sort

Cats in a Well

Pleading

Ode to My Chronically Ill Self

I Am He as You are He as You Are Me

Yams of San Francisco

Falling in a Spiral

Heroin/e

Fire in the Sky

The Axe Forgets, But the Tree Remembers

Circles Part 2

You Cock Your Hat as You Please

For Her

Lessons in Masquerade

Side-Scrolling

Sparks

On Being Cattle

Zero Day

Sis Mish

Missionary Position

I’m Coping Here

Bob

I Can’t Wait to Meet Her

Muppets on the Wall

Running Before the Dogs

Any Given Sunday

Boy, You Got Me

This is Not for You

Isn’t It a Pity I Feel so Safe with You?

Lapis Lazuli

Ananias (Daddy)

Living as my Own

Trusting Myself to Try

Dear Sidewalk

Dedication

To my mother, Carol Woodard, for the constant trips to the

bookstore and for believing that my ramblings would one day

take me somewhere. I believe in myself because of her.

To my great uncle, Lewis Howell, for my first copy of

Shakespeare’s sonnets and for always encouraging me

to read everything I can. I write because of him.

To the housecats: Bella, Zorro, and Cricket for staying

up the long nights editing and writing and rewriting.

Their purrs are encapsulated in every page.

It Goes On

My old heart still beats.

Barely a sound.

Barely a beat.

But the blood pumps.

In my lungs the air flows.

My old heart can still feel.

And I can still feel its beat.

Circles

I am not Mohammed.

Yet here is my mountain.

How I envy the faithful

Who move in droves

And find their way to climb.

Mohammed’s mountain.

My mountain.

Alexander’s Gordian knot.

The faithful climb

And I

Walk

Around

For Granted

Everyone is one too many.

Every time is time too much.

People leave

Time passes

Nothing matters much.

But you?

You…

You.

You’re everyone enough.

Every time too short.

You’re worth