13 January 2021
Thank you Prozac. What a difference one pill can make. Who knew? I suppose psychiatrists and experts knew, but I had no idea. I’m a convert now. I didn’t quite know what to expect when I decided I needed to try medication because I was tired of feeling the way I did, and had for a really long time. Not only am I depressed and riddled with anxiety at all hours of the day, but I’m also profoundly angry. I had grown used to the depression and the shadow it cast over my life, figuring it was simply normal. The anxiety would trickle in and out, more so depending on outside circumstances. Then Trump became president and the gloom set in. The pandemic hit and shit hit the fan. I grew frustrated with the sheer volume of people who couldn’t understand either the need or the purpose of the Black Lives Matter protests and movement sweeping across America. Soon I could barely get through a work day. Then it was during a day off that I felt as though my anxiety was strangling me.
The depression and the anxiety were both alarming to me, and had grown in strength and size over what felt like a small period of time. The anger took on a life force all its own. Everything set me off, especially the smallest most insignificant thing. And I couldn’t let it go. The anger took up residence within me and it felt like it was going to be a permanent move. I grew angry that I was angry, which in turn fueled my newfound rage to alarming levels. A really great equation. It’s exhausting to be so angry all of the time. I tried exercise, mediation, and journaling to ease the anger. I found that these activities only abated the anger briefly, but they couldn’t combat it and forget about taming it.
Anger found me at every turn. I found myself irrationally irate while driving, dealing with traffic and all the assholes on the road. I no longer saw other drivers as people trying to get from one place to the other, now they were simply pushy little shits getting too close, not using their turn signal and just taking up too much space on the road. I grew angry at all the small stuff, but it had started to seep over into all the bigger challenges in my life. I couldn’t let go of the anger I felt toward my sister for her behavior toward myself and the rest of our family during her last major bipolar episode. I was angry at the diabetes I had been burdened with for 30 years. My anxiety threw my blood sugar readings so out of whack that I felt I would implode at any moment. I grew angry with society and friends for constantly telling me I should date. I have no desire to date. Why put any effort into a relationship with a man? Seems like a dead end to me. Somehow I still found some men attractive, even after all the sexual harassment and abuse allegations. I just didn’t want to have anything to do with them on an emotional level.
I found myself under attack from a triple threat, what with the anxiety and depression and my new penchant for anger. I was sinking. I attempted antidepressants years ago while in college, but never really gave them the time needed for them to get to work. It became clear to me that I needed to give them another go. I couldn’t keep this shit up. It was already taking a toll on my body and my sanity. Enough was enough. I needed to put a stop to the chaotic state of my mind.
So I made an appointment with a doctor and told her about my anger, the anxiety and the depression. It was a real lengthy diatribe. She wrote me a prescription for Prozac, well the generic form of prozac, which of course is some name that I cannot pronounce, so let’s just call it prozac. I popped my first pill and crossed my fingers. That night my blood sugars normalized by the morning. It was wild. I felt like I hit the jack pot, but without all the turmoil that usually comes attached to a big win. After a couple weeks I found I could move through life a little easier, no longer spending an abhorrent amount of time feeling anxious or angry. I can’t remember feeling this free, at least not in a long time.
At one time my brain was filled with endless thoughts, anxiety, and sad memories. Those things are still there, but now they’re tucked into the crevices of my brain, no longer taking up prime real estate. There’s open space now, where once there was no vacancy. All this extra room feels like a gift and an opportunity to fill my brain with new thoughts, new ideas, maybe new ways of thinking. Ultimately, the clutter that once stuffed my brain no longer holds as much power it once had, and that is truly liberating.
My mind has a clarity and a stillness that hadn’t been present for a really long time. For years I hoped there would be an explanation for why I felt so stuck, or mentally paralyzed. I think the reason I couldn’t pursue anything, and even the thought of trying to put myself out there was so harrowing was because I needed something to quiet my mind and guide me steadily from an idea to action. I needed something to lift the dam and keep things flowing. The first time I remember feeling stuck was after I somehow managed to graduate college. I was utterly burnt out. I had a journalism degree and no ambitions to do anything with it. I made a few small attempts at finding work that involved writing, but ultimately I stuck with what felt comfortable, what I knew could I could do and what paid the bills. Restaurants were always a source of comfort to me, especially being in the kitchen. So that’s where I stayed year in and year out, across multiple states.
I could see where I wanted to be in life but couldn’t turn that desire into reality. So I kept my head down and pushed through depression to make it through the day. It wasn’t bleak all day everyday. I could forgo the heaviness that accompanied the depression for periods of time. I knew it was possible to feel good, but these lapses in time were simply that, they weren’t a guarantee. Feeling good became fleeting, offering mere glimpses into how things could feel “normal.” Whether knowing that I could feel normal was within reach, if only I could grasp it and hold onto it, was helpful or hindering isn’t clear to me. Is it better to know something is out there and attainable, but perhaps nearly impossible to sustain? After all these years I still don’t know the answer. Perhaps that’s no longer the question I should be asking.
Depression for me has never been completely crippling. What I mean by that is even though I could feel a constant burden of feeling like piss, I still managed to go to work, exercise and find the joy in simple things. I realize now that I put an immense amount of pressure on myself to get things done, to appear as if nothing were wrong, that ultimately it made me feel even worse. I was a high functioning depressed person. I’m sure a lot of people can relate. I very rarely allowed myself to wallow, and only on rare occasions did I throw myself a pity party. I think this maintenance that I forced myself to attain caused me to not fully understand just how much I was suffering internally, because I never sat in those feelings, never really let them see the light of day. I squashed those thoughts or memories in a corner of my brain and left them there to fester.
It’s only just dawned on me that I really don’t need to feel this way. Once I acknowledged that I began to see things differently. I want to confront my sadness and invite it to sit with me so that I can hash it out internally, then drop it for good so that it just becomes a thing of the past. It no longer holds the power to define me. It loses significance. I realized that in my case I couldn’t do this solely on my own, or even with the help of a therapist. I needed to bring in the big guns. What I needed was antidepressants. It’s easy to think I should have done this years ago, and believe me this thought occurs very regularly, but I’ve come to realize I must do things in my own time. We all do. I’m thankful I got to this place, even if it took me over a decade to arrive. It was worth the wait.
Parsing through your past and all the emotions that tag along can feel overwhelming. It can be daunting. Sometimes it seems like it would just be easier to push it all back down under the surface, and bury it there. But I know firsthand, that kind of thinking and action will get me only so far. It doesn’t stay where you bury it, if you don’t dissect it first. I can’t turn back now, nor do I really want to either. I know what that state of mind feels like. Been there, done that. No thank you. It’s like I’m about to jump out of a plane, but this time I have a safety net in pill form. This time when I dig through my sadness and anxiety, I won’t be on a free fall into a depressive oblivion. I can’t get caught or trapped on the way down, because now I’m climbing up and out of the darkness. I’m moving towards the light with a little help, rather than towards a numbing sort of limbo. Next stop, a weightless state where sadness can pass through me, no longer chaining me in place. In that place anything is possible.
HALF FULL DECK 