I keep forgetting to take my vitamins. I must remember to take my vitamins. Or maybe my entire internal framework will come apart at the seams. I must remember so that I can remain healthy and strong—vital. One must always be vital. That is, if they want to be, in the end, useful. That’s all anyone really wants to be, isn’t it? Except I wasn’t sure how much that mattered to me anymore. Maybe that’s why I was so often forgetting to take my vitamins. Where once I had been religious about it, never missing a day (let alone weeks at a time), I had presently accumulated a stockpile of unconsumed vitamins. 

The only reason I had bothered taking them in the first place was because “the good doctor” had assigned them to me. Told me my blood was lacking—well, the term used was “dangerously low on”—vitamins D and B12. Then again, who wasn’t lacking those specific vitamins? They were incredibly difficult to “glean naturally.” Particularly in this climate. Starting with how the sun is an all but toxic presence that permeates our skin every time we go out rather than nourishing it, as They would like us to believe. And that was mostly thanks to the lasting effects of ozone layer depletion. So who would really want to go out to soak up the hazardous rays “for fun”/“for the D”? Or any other so-called health benefits? There were none. The days of natural betterment were gone. It all had to be artificially supplemented now—and solely because we had insisted upon artificially supplementing everything in the first place. I had certainly given up on being “natural” long ago.

Living “in a society” left me with no other option but to submit. And that’s why I took the vitamins like a docile duckie. Until I didn’t. Oh, and I forgot to call out how B12 only really exists in foods “of animal origin.” And since most animals are diseased these days (humans especially), I tended to avoid eating meat, fish or poultry. And also eggs. Eggs are sketchy as fuck. No wonder, then, that “the good doctor” discovered its absence within my inherently “bad blood.” No sooner had the blood test come in then she told me to adhere to her recommended vitamin intake tout de suite. That was about three years ago now. 

Three years during which the sun’s rays only became more damaging and the animals only became more rotten from within. What that meant for the vitamin industry, of course, was a financial boon. The kind that made me wonder if they weren’t in bed together—the vitamin companies and the Earth-plundering industrialists. It would make sense, and, clearly, stranger things have happened. I wouldn’t be surprised if that “good doctor” got a cut of the profits, too. Everyone receiving their “tidy little sum” for doing their collective part to destroy Mother Nature while simultaneously ensuring that people became irrevocably dependent on all that was unnatural. Just. Like. Me. 

So maybe that was the crux of why I had stopped taking my vitamins. It was in protest. Of the sham. Of the belief that we were capable of doing anything to avoid our inevitable fate: complete annihilation. Whether individually or collectively. Even the billionaires (most of them men, naturally) had convinced themselves their money could buy/guarantee immortality. And perhaps, at the very least, it could secure them a few more decades of life than the average person. A few more decades during which they could pretend that they were special, or that the world owed them any favors, any preferential treatment. How disappointed they would be when they learned otherwise. Like those billionaires on that rinky-dink excuse for a submarine that went down into the depths of the ocean to get an up close and personal look of the Titanic’s ruins.

I shouldn’t have to say it, but they were the lucky ones, even in death. Getting to implode instantaneously like that after reaching a certain depth in the sea. Not every billionaire was going to have their death go so seamlessly. Ah, but where was I? The vitamin industry. A total racket. A multibillion-dollar racket, to be exact. One that the masses were only too happy to be conned into, telling themselves it would help “enhance performance.” The daily performance of being human, you might say. In my defense, at least I was taking vitamins for a medically diagnosed deficiency. I wasn’t some simp, like the others—believing unflinchingly in the Cult of the Vitamin. 

A cult that endures even though science has repeatedly debunked any supposed health advantages to knocking back the vitamins and supplements. That it only really helps people with actual deficiencies. Physical ones anyway. Tragically, people will only ever believe what they want to, parsing out the information that suits them the best and latching on to that “truth” forever. But the only truth in this life is that everything is a fucking con. All stemming from the deeply-rooted desire to extrapolate as much money as possible from people. 

The commodification of everything somehow ended up extending even to what ought to be sacrosanct: human health. But nooo, capitalism rules that nothing is out of the reach of potential monetization. Ergo, dupe those with “money to burn” into believing that they need vitamins to live longer. Because the longer a human lives, the more money they’ll throw into the pot of capitalism. Shit, maybe they’ll even end up producing another child later on—another Good Consumer for Capitalism’s army. A seemingly indestructible one that manages to propagate exponentially rather than diminish. 

I decided that, somehow, I needed to become one less “soldier.” This I told myself while antithetically buying a gift card to the drugstore (yes, that’s a thing) for one of my few friends. A friend who, at times, I’ve perhaps seen as more than a friend—only to realize such senseless pining is as much of a waste of time as taking my vitamins. There were fleeting moments, of course, when I thought Teddy might return my affections. But enough years spent watching him fuck a revolving door of different women cured me of that disease. I may be an inherent masochist, but I’m not stupid. I know when doing something (like lusting) is pointless. Which, needless to say, brings me back to how vitamins are just another part of the grand capitalist deception. The one that persistently convinces you that you “need” shit that you don’t. 

And those wants disguised as false needs are what perpetually destroys the entity we’re all nourished by: the environment. In fact, maybe I only allowed Teddy to be one of my friends precisely because he was such a bona fide environmentalist. I don’t mean he just, like, recycled or whatever. He was actually the sort of guy who would chain himself to a tree that was being decimated to make way for some atrocious office building or commercial space. So I guess you could say a person like Teddy wasn’t exactly a dime a dozen. Thus, my more than platonic love that occasionally flared up for him. 

Maybe buying a gift card to the drugstore was a part of that flare-up, and I was simply trying to mask it behind “friendly goodwill.” Not to mention “oddity cachet.” I wanted to stand out to him with this non sequitur present. To make him engage in some kind of banter about it with me. Even though such thinking is a symptom of watching too many rom-coms (yet another key propaganda source in the art of buttressing capitalism). Alas, when we met up for coffee, my heart already sank the instant he commenced our meeting with a rehashing of how attractive his latest conquest was. This still didn’t deter me from handing him the gift card and mindlessly suggesting he buy some vitamins with it. 

Teddy looked from the gift card to me, regarding both with a perplexed expression. “But Erica, you hate vitamins. You’ve been going on and on about what a scam they are. Why would you want me to take them?” 

I shrugged as I sipped my coffee. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll have an effect on you that they can’t have on me anymore since I don’t believe in them.” 

“If you don’t, why should I?”

I glared at him and said, “I hear folic acid and zinc are great for male…potency.”

He fumbled awkwardly with the gift card and then decided to shove it in the front pocket of his backpack. “Okay, well, duly noted. You could also just give me the fuck ton of vitamin bottles you’ve been sitting on the past few months.”

“I have to sit on something if I can’t sit on your face.” Although I thought I had only said that internally, it was out loud. This much I knew from the growing horror on his face. 

“Erica…um, are you feeling all right today?”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m great. That was just a joke.” He blinked at me, unconvinced, so I added, “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

“You know, it might not actually be a bad idea for you to take those vitamins again. Maybe you’re less loopy when you do.”

I nodded. “Sure. Maybe.”

Our rendezvous ended shortly thereafter. I had made it weird and uncomfortable, and he probably wanted to get back to boning Miss Hot Cunt. Once I was back at home, where I could be as weird as I wanted to be, I found myself reaching for the vitamins. Perhaps Teddy was right. I was less “loopy” when I embraced the modern equivalent of doling out Seconal to housewives as a panacea (which was ironic, since Seconal was designed to make you loopy as all get-out). Or maybe I just wanted Teddy to finally see me as someone worth taking notice of beyond the role of “kooky bestie,” and that listening to his advice would somehow assist with that. Either way, I think I’m really starting to see a difference since I’ve made a concerted effort to remember taking my vitamins daily again. My performance as a human is enhanced, I’m almost sure of it.