Trae Stewart
CAPTION MODE
It starts in the pharmacy, under lights that make everyone look guilty.
I’m in the pickup line, clutching my phone like it can anchor me. A mother bounces a toddler. A man taps his foot. The pharmacist’s smile is professional, practiced.
My phone buzzes.
ACCESSIBILITY TIP: Try Live Captions.
Before I can swipe it away:
CAPTION MODE: ON
And then the subtitles appear at the bottom of my vision. Not on the screen. On the world.
You’re too close.
They can tell.
Apologize for existing.
My stomach drops. Heat crawls up my neck. I step forward anyway because my legs know how to perform normally.
“What’s your name?” the pharmacist asks.
The captions answer first.
Say the wrong name.
Humiliate yourself.
They’ll see what you are.
I give my real name. She finds my profile. She asks for my date of birth. I answer. My voice is steady in the way a hostage negotiator’s voice is steady.
Then the captions go for the throat.
Grab something. Throw it.
Make a scene.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
My body flinches. The pharmacist’s eyes sharpen.
“You okay?” she asks.
All the air in me turns thin.
“I’m fine,” I lie, too fast.
She slides a paper bag toward me. “Any questions for the pharmacist?”
I want to say: How do I uninstall my own brain?
Instead: “No.”
I walk out like I belong in public. The captions follow me past cough syrup, past greeting cards, past the exit.
You’re dangerous.
You’re one impulse away.
Everyone is safer without you.
In the parking lot, the text sits at the bottom of my windshield like a ribbon on a bomb.
Swerve.
Crash.
You won’t, but you could.
At home, I drop the bag on the counter and slide down to the floor, breathing hard. Quiet fills the apartment like water. Quiet gives the captions room.
Call someone.
Don’t.
They’ll get tired of you.
I try to turn it off. Settings. Search. Captions. Nothing. It’s like the feature isn’t on my phone at all. It’s on me.
The captions brighten, thrilled by my attention.
This is the truth.
This is who you are.
I press my palms into my eyes until the pressure hurts.
My therapist’s voice floats up, irritatingly calm: Don’t argue. Don’t engage. Let it pass.
I’ve hated that advice because the captions don’t feel like weather. They feel like warnings.
But my body is exhausted from wrestling.
I drop my hands and whisper the smallest word I can find.
“Okay.”
The caption doesn’t vanish. It just… hesitates.
You should be ashamed.
“Okay,” I say again. Not agreeing. Not confessing. Just acknowledging the noise exists.
You should disappear.
“Okay.”
My chest tightens, waiting for punishment. None arrives. The apartment doesn’t collapse. The world doesn’t confirm the caption.
I pour a glass of water with shaking hands. The text scrolls on.
What if you drop it and shatter it and bleed and…
“Okay,” I say, softer, like I’m talking to a frantic child who thinks fear is foresight.
I take a sip.
The font shrinks.
Not dramatically. Just a notch. Smaller letters. Less shadow. Less authority.
I blink hard, sure I imagined it. Then another caption tries to flare:
You could hurt someone.
That one hooks deep. My mind lunges for the old courtroom: evidence, rebuttals, vows.
Instead I hold the glass and say, “Okay.”
Then, quietly, without arguing: “And I’m not doing that.”
The caption flickers. The font shrinks again.
I sit on the couch and let the next ones come.
Fraud.
Too much.
Always like this.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Okay.”
And the strangest thing happens: without my fight, the captions lose fuel. They still sting, but they stop filling the whole bottom of my life like headlines.
By evening they’re small enough I have to look for them.
My sister texts: You okay?
The captions whisper, tiny now:
Don’t answer. Burden.
I feel the old reflex to obey.
I type anyway: Hard day. Can we talk later?
At the bottom of my vision, a caption appears in a small, almost polite font:
Okay.
I stare at it.
Not gone. Not cured.
Just finally, finally, not in charge of the movie.
DISCONTINUATION PLAN (EX: YOU)
Medication: You (extended-release, taken daily for three years)
Indication: acute loneliness, chronic hope, intermittent self-abandonment
Prescriber: me, against better judgment
Pharmacy: the part of town I can’t drive through without sweating
Warnings: abrupt discontinuation may cause rebound symptoms, vivid dreams, and the belief that closure is a real location
I open a new document at 2:11 a.m. because my body refuses sleep unless it is building something. The cursor blinks like a heart monitor. I title it the way I title everything I can’t emotionally handle:
TAPER SCHEDULE.
This makes the breakup sound clinical, manageable. A process. A set of steps. Not a cliff.
My therapist once told me my brain treats love like a drug. I laughed. Then I went home and refreshed your profile ten times and didn’t eat dinner.
So. Schedule.
Week 1: Reduce Exposure (Social Media)
Dose: stop checking their stories.
PRN: if urge spikes, drink water, text a friend, walk around the block.
Day 1: I unfollow you and feel the phantom limb of your face. My thumb hovers where your icon used to be, confused, like it’s been trained. Muscle memory is the cruelest loyalty.
Day 2: I check anyway. I don’t “check,” technically. I “accidentally” type your name. I “just want to see” if you’re okay. You are okay. You are eating tacos somewhere with neon lighting and a smile that looks like it belongs to a different life.
Adverse effect: nausea, rage, a sharp need to punish myself for still wanting.
Day 3: I delete the apps. I redownload them. I delete them again. My brain calls this “tapering.” My body calls it withdrawal.
Week 2: Discontinue Rumination (Arguments)
Dose: stop rehearsing conversations that will never happen.
Goal: reduce internal litigation.
I have tried every version of the argument. In one, I am calm and devastatingly articulate. In another, I cry so precisely you finally understand. In another, you apologize and mean it.
None of these are real. All of these live rent-free in my head.
So I prescribe myself new rules: when the argument begins, I say Not today. When it returns, I say Not today. When it comes back louder, I say it again.
Not as a moral victory. As an interruption.
Day 10: I catch myself arguing with you in the shower. I stop mid-sentence and laugh, a short ugly sound. Water runs down my face like I’m crying, and I can’t tell if it’s grief or shampoo.
Side effect: silence. It is not peaceful. It is empty in a way that makes me want to fill it with you.
Week 3: Sleep Hygiene (Dream Taper)
Dose: no more rereading old texts before bed.
Support: weighted blanket, audiobook, melatonin.
The texts are my controlled substance. Proof, I tell myself. Evidence that you once loved me.
Day 16: I scroll back far enough to find the first “good morning.” My chest tightens like I’ve been punched. I read it three times, as if repetition can summon you back.
Day 17: I move the thread into an archive folder and label it DO NOT OPEN like I’m putting a dangerous chemical in a cabinet.
Day 18: I open it anyway. I tell myself it’s the last time. I have said “last time” so many times it has become a prayer and a joke.
Week 4: Gradual Reintroduction to Places
Dose: drive past the coffee shop without stopping.
Exposure: five minutes in the grocery store aisle we used to argue in.
Caution: avoid triggers when possible, but do not build a life around avoidance.
The coffee shop smells like cinnamon and betrayal. The barista asks, “Same order?” and my body almost answers yes because my body is loyal to routines even when the routine is pain.
I order something different. It tastes wrong. I drink it anyway.
That night, I write in the schedule: small victories count.
Then I cross it out. Then I write it again.
Relapse Prevention Plan
Relapse is not failure. Relapse is information.
That’s what the handout says. The handout has never met my brain.
Warning signs:
• “Just checking” their page
• sudden urge to send a “hey” text
• romanticizing the good parts
• believing that missing them means it was right.
Interventions:
• call someone
• go outside
• eat something
• wait ten minutes.
Day 26: It’s raining. Rain makes everything sound like you’re being forgiven. I haven’t thought about you all morning, which feels suspicious, like calm before a seizure.
At 7:43 p.m., my phone lights up with your name.
My heart does a violent, hopeful thing, like a dog hearing keys.
The message is one word:
Hey.
That’s it. No punctuation. No apology. No context. A single syllable tossed like a hook.
under my tongue.
My brain produces the argument schedule, the sleep schedule, the exposure plan, and sets them all on fire.
I type back immediately. My hands are not mine.
Hi.
Then I delete it. Then I type:
What do you want?
Delete. Then:
I miss you.
Delete. Then I stare at the blinking cursor until it feels like it’s mocking me.
You send another message.
Can we talk?
Relapse is brutal because it feels like rescue.
I want to say yes. I want to swallow you like a pill and let the ache stop.
Instead I open my document. My stupid, brave schedule. I scroll to the top where I wrote: abrupt discontinuation may cause rebound symptoms.
I breathe until the wave crests and doesn’t kill me.
Then I write the only dose I can tolerate:
Response: Not today.
I send it.
My hands shake. My chest burns. My body screams for the old medication.
You don’t reply.
Withdrawal looks like this: surviving the silence you begged for.
I close my eyes. I count my breaths. I let the craving exist without obeying it.
The schedule doesn’t say this part, because no schedule ever tells the truth about pain.
So I add a final line at the bottom, honest and unglamorous:
Week 5: continue living.
PRN: repeat forever.
IDENTIFICATION BAND
I begin as a blank strip of laminated plastic in a dispenser under fluorescent light. We wait in stacks, quiet as forms.
At 1:12 a.m., a nurse peels me free, prints a label, and warms my surface with your name.
LAST, FIRST. DOB. MRN. NKDA.
A barcode like a mouth that only speaks to scanners.
“I’m going to put this on you,” she says, gentle the way people get when they are holding someone else’s fear. “So we can keep you safe.”
You don’t answer. Your eyes are too wide. Your mouth is pressed thin, as if silence can cancel consequences.
She wraps me around your wrist and snaps my clasp shut. It’s designed to tighten, not release. Safety is often built like that.
Beep.
The first scan. The system learns where you are.
They take your shoelaces. Your belt. Your phone. They ask questions they already asked.
Name. Date of birth. Where are you? Why are you here? Any thoughts of harming yourself? Any thoughts of harming others.
Your voice is steady, which confuses them. Steady voices don’t always fit the boxes.
A clinician arrives with a clipboard and a practiced calm. She sits across from you and watches you like a person, not a barcode.
“Do you feel safe going home tonight?” she asks.
Your pulse jumps under me. Your fingers brush my edge, testing if this is real.
“I don’t know,” you say.
Small sentence. Big hinge.
She nods once. “We’re going to keep you for observation. Seventy-two-hour evaluation.”
Seventy-two hours is not a number. It’s a container that closes around you.
A nurse comes with papers. Rights. Policies. Neutral language that still stings.
“You’re on a hold,” she says, as if explaining a parking rule.
Your thumb pinches my clasp, hard. You find out what I’m made to do: resist. Remind.
Beep.
They scan me before water. They scan me before vitals. They scan me before you’re allowed a blanket. Every kindness has a barcode gate.
In the morning, you apologize for asking for water.
“You don’t have to apologize for needing things,” the nurse says, and scans me anyway.
Beep.
Your sister arrives later. Her eyes go to me first, not your face. Not because she doesn’t love you, because she needs proof you’re here.
She reaches for your hand and touches plastic before skin.
“Hey,” she says, voice polished bright to keep it from breaking.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper.
“Don’t,” she says. “Just…don’t.”
When the psychiatrist asks, “Do you still feel like you might hurt yourself?” you look down at me like I can translate you safely.
You say, “I don’t want to die.”
It isn’t the clean answer the system prefers, but it’s the true one. Your pulse steadies under my label, as if truth is its own vital sign.
You leave on day two with papers folded like a fragile map. A nurse unlocks my clasp with a small tool and lifts me from your wrist. The skin beneath is pale, indented, an invisible ring of containment.
She drops me into a bin marked BIOHAZARD.
I am not a biohazard. I am a memory hazard.
You will go home and scrub your hands and try to forget the beep, the questions, the apology for water, the way your sister touched plastic first.
I am built to tighten, not release.
Even after I’m gone, the shape of me remains.
Trae Stewart is a professor, author, and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner. His work has appeared in Switchgrass Review, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, San Antonio Review, Medicine and Meaning, and Dipity Literary Magazine, among others.