...and we're back

Blogger, oh, Blogger. You irritate me so. I'd love to be able to take this off of Blogger and use my own domain, but my html skillz are not good enough for that.

I'd been toying with the idea of doing what I have heard called a "flock" a friends lock for a while; I don't know who y'all are out there, reading my missives, rants, recipes...of course, most of y'all don't know who I am, either. I kind of liked that arrangement. If I wanted invisibility, I'd keep a paper journal, after all. I have many faults. Self-centered, diva, control freak...I know them all. Narcissism figures in there pretty large. Someone who really thinks that the world gives a damn about what they think and feel, that's the type of person who keeps a public blog.

Who reads a random blog? Anyone, really. Someone Googles Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's quote that contains the title of this blog, stumbles across something I've written, reads it, likes it, comes back. Or you're one of the people who I have trusted in real life enough to share the url. Or you like that randomocity of that "next blog" button at the top of the screen. Who are you? You are everyone, anyone.

I am a 34 year old married woman who works full time at a job she loves, knits, has a beautiful circle of amazing friends, a family she adores. I'm your sister, your friend, the woman behind you in the check-out line at the grocery store, the woman next door, the person on the mat next to you in your yoga class. Everyone and no one.

I've fretted over some random person figuring out exactly who I am and "outing" me. Why? Really, I don't know. Nothing I've written here is against the law; having an anonymous blog isn't a crime. I was worried when I first started writing that my employers at the time wouldn't really appreciate my point of view on certain subjects. They wrote me a paycheck; I kept quiet in public about my opinions. Being a faceless, nameless person on the web allowed me to say some things that I really wanted to, but couldn't, in the world. Then there was my fascination with an actor and a TV show; forum posts live forever, and some of the things I wrote on fan forums are not things I'd want my grandmother to read, let alone someone I worked with. Having "Lucy" connected to me; well, it'd be a little embarrassing, really. Add to all of that the fact that I have written extensively about my journey with mental illness...and "a little embarrassing" speeds past "a little" and straight to "mortifying".

A nebulous future potential employer may choose not to hire me based on my mental illness if they read what I've written here; sure, that's completely illegal, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. Mental illness is still so poorly understood that many people think mental illness = dangerous. Most people who have a mental illness are normal, functioning members of society. They are your neighbors, your sister, your friends, the woman behind you in the grocery line. Look around. At one time a few years ago, it was estimated that one out of every 5 Americans were taking Prozac. That's 20% of the population. Out of 10 of your friends, two of them. We don't talk about it. We don't advertise it. I'm NOT ashamed, but much like the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell, I feel no need to shout from the rooftops that I have a mental illness.

We are everyone. We are no one. We are out there. We shouldn't need to be silent.

I did the flock partially while trying to change the Blogger template, but also because I was worried that someone in particular had "found" me. I unlocked it for the same reason I started writing about my mental illness; I sought help because of another blogger. Maybe one of you will do the same; recognize yourself in a post and decide to stop suffering in silence. If one person does that, then my potential embarrassment is a small price to pay.

I am anyone. I am everyone. I am no one. I am your sister. Your daughter. Your friend. Your neighbor. Who are you?

Or....not.

After about two solid weeks of the lower dose of anti-depressants, I'm ready to declare the experiment a failure. I'm overwhelmed, super-tired, and not particularly cheerful.

But this isn't supposed to be easy, and getting ON the meds was tough, too. They take about 6 weeks to work their way into your system, although I don't understand the whys of that, since you take them every damn day. So the "I'll show you" side of my personality wants to stick with it partly in the belief that it will get better and partly to prove to myself that I can. Lowering the dose is never going to be easier than in the summer; trying this in the depths of winter would be catastrophic. I can picture that resulting in getting back to the point where losing my car keys is major meltdown time.

If I give up on it now, therefore, I won't try again until next summer.

I keep saying that I'm OK with the fact that I might need the meds for the rest of my life, but maybe I'm not OK with that. Because I don't think it is all right to need the maximum daily dosage for the rest of my life, really. What would happen to me if I was living in the times before these drugs were so readily available? Would I have been one of those people that friends and family would natter to pull myself up by my own bootstraps? Or would I have been one of the millions that suffered in silence, quietly choosing a handful of sleeping pills over the stigma of admitting that I had a mental illness? Thank goodness for the modern age, and for the meds.

Stepping down the dose is at the suggestion of my doctor, although we did not discuss the ramifications of it. He told me to step it down by 150 mg, which means that I take one 300 mg pill a day instead of one 300 mg and one 150 mg daily. I didn't expect it to be difficult. I didn't expect it to be such a roller-coaster. If nothing worthwhile is easy, though, I don't know why I thought this would be simple.

I should, in the interest of science, give it the same 6 weeks I gave the meds to start working. Give my body that time to adjust to alteration (again) of my brain's chemistry. But I'm sticking with the adage of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and going back to the 450 mg dosage. The negative effects of lowering the amount that I take each day is not worth it to me right now.

One of my personality traits that I really don't like is that I'm indecisive. It is good to be able to look at a problem from many sides, to be able to see all the benefits of a particular decision, but not good to waffle between two or three options. I'm not fence-sitting on this one, and I'm going to try to stop fence-sitting in the rest of my life, too. June 1, 2010 seems like a good date to me to try again.

And on the downside...

I'm second-guessing myself with the decision to step down the meds. I had a moment yesterday where I felt completely overwhelmed. This was a moment where someone who does not have a mental illness would take a deeeep breath and think, wow, dude, I've got a lot to do. Let's make a list.

I, on the other hand, took a deep breath and thought, OMGWTFBBQ, what the hell am I going to do? I'm going to fail, and everyone will see and laugh and say they knew I couldn't manage and and and and OMG, Luce this has to STOP NAO! You stop it right now! {gave myself a little shake-till-your-teeth-rattle} Pull yourself together. You can do this. One. Step. At. A. Time. Logically, step by step. Make a list. Cross things off of it. Communicate that you're overwhelmed. Prioritize.

And I was back to being mostly all right. The fact that I can stop that train right in its tracks is something I am pretty fucking proud of, if you'll pardon the foul language. A few years ago when that train left the station, I might have walked out to play in traffic.

Things that the meds help that I'm missing: sleeping. I was up much past my self-appointed bed time of roughly 10 PM. Not that I'm not tired. I am. I'm not sleepy. I gave up around 1 AM, took an ambien, and slept until the alarm went off at 6. Early to bed tonight, no ifs, ands, or buts!

Down the steps

Not long after I wrote in a post about the Doc telling me to step-down my meds, I finally remembered to do it, and have been for about a week now.

It seems to be going OK.

I'm reminded of the book Is It Me Or Is It My Meds by David Karp when I tell you that one of the few effects I've noticed from taking less of my Wellbutrin is that I'm more apt to say something nasty or biting to someone. Not funny-sarcastic-snarky. Downright obnoxiously rude. My gut instinct is to just - bam - snit back at someone, instead of answering them nicely. DH, unfortunately, seems to bear the brunt of this.

So then the question seems to be: am I really and truly a total bitch, and the meds kept that in check? And I'm quite afraid that the answer is yes. And I don't like that answer very much. Which means I don't like me very much. Which starts the whole vicious downward-spiraling tornado of the mental imbalance that is depression, since the disease insists to you that you're worthless.

I'm not worthless. I won't listen to that particular demon. I can fight against that, and I can do it with less of the medication. It is time, ffs, to begin the path to cut down the dose. I freely admit that I may need the meds for the rest of my life. I'm OK with that. But I don't think that I need the maximum dose every day for the rest of my life. Nearly 2 years of the maximum dosage is enough time to turn it around, and my life is much better than it was 2 years ago. (At this time 2 years ago, for those of you just tuning in, I was unemployed and deeply unhappy.) So I'm comfortable with the decision to step it down, and I'll work on that snark response reaction. This time, "down" will not be equal to "out".

Pitching a fit

There are pros and cons to the meds.  Pros - - - you don't feel worthless anymore, you feel like there is a possibility that things might maybe get better, you're able to function a little better.  One of the things that bothers me about them can't really be called a con, but it does bother me.

I can't believe that I'm going to kvetch about this.

The meds change your outlook, and not a little, either.  I don't get angry, or super-upset, about much of anything at all.  As if there's a refrain of REM's Shiny Happy People running through my head.  I see others get upset about something, or lose their tempers, and most of the time, it is difficult for me to understand why they're all in a tizzy.  Is anyone going to die over whatever the problem is?  Are we standing on the precipice of complete disaster?  No?  Well, then, geez, dude, chill.  

How do I know that these reactions are the meds?  Hahahahahaha.  *snerk* Hoooo! Wait, wait, lemme catch my breath.....bwahahahahaa!  Ask anyone who went to elementary/high school with me about my rage.  I spent most of my teen years being pissed at the world in general, and even into my 20s, I still had the occasional anger issue.  I never physically hurt anyone; but I can be bru-tal with what comes out of my mouth.  Words that can wound badly, I'm good at that when I've got some rage going. 

I'm also a little mystified when someone gets angry at me.  Especially when I've done something that was not planned with an eye to piss them off.  Sure, sure, I snark a good deal, say sarcastic and biting things, which I then have to apologize for when what I thought was smart and funny was instead hurtful, or worse, unfunny.  But I don't go out of my way to make someone angry, it just isn't in my agenda.  I've got too much else to do, I haven't the time to construct elaborate plots to offend someone in my daily circle.

I think that the depression plays a part in this, too; that feeling which tells you you're worthless is the same little demon whispering in your ear who tells you that nothing really matters.  Why bother?  Its all pointless.  So when someone gets mad at you, you automatically think that you deserve it, and somehow, if you were a better person than this worthless, empty shell, they wouldn't be angry with you.  (Because that makes perfect sense, no?  There's a reason that they call it mental illness, people.)

Outwardly, that is easy to conceal; you don't show that you're hurting, there's that brave, tough-girl facade that I talk about often, which fools the world into thinking that you're an independent little cuss.  Inwardly, however, you're agreeing with every word as someone calls your intellect or whatever into question, reads you the riot act.

When the meds first started working for me, but before they were at the correct dosage, I wasn't feeling much of anything at all.  I didn't feel like I had this pit of despair sloshing around inside, but I also couldn't get excited about something, didn't feel much joy.  I had thought that feeling nothing would be preferable to feeling so horrible, but then I wasn't so sure.  Feeling nothing was sort of a relief.  But only for a little while, because that "nothing" faded back into the suffocating misery.

With the proper dosage, I regained the ability to be happy and excited about things, and also finally had the correct perspective on the world.  Losing your keys is not a reason to have a meltdown.

But has it gone too far in the other direction?  That I don't think anything is a big deal unless it is a catastrophe?  

Hmmm.

Being a grownup?  Not the constant party I expected.  :-)

Off & On & Up

Even though my depression is mostly regulated thanks to modern medicine, I still have days here & there that are difficult.  Sometimes I know what triggers it.  Sometimes I don't.  When I'm having a difficult day, I often say that I'm "a little rough around the edges."  I picture single-celled organisms from my high school biology days, with spiky outlines.  Usually the meds soothe this; the meds make it easier to deal with things that would otherwise be catastrophes of epic proportions.  When the meds weren't quite right, or before I sought treatment, something as mundane as losing my keys could send me tail-spinning.

These days, it doesn't have to be anything in particular; I've decided that hormonal surges can account for days when I'm sarcastic and snarfy and snarky with everyone and everything.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah, how would you be able to tell the difference from any other day, Luce?  There, I beat ya to your snark!)  

Today is one of those rough around the edges days.  I looked in the mirror this morning whilst getting ready for work, and I noticed the bit of weight I've gained in my face.  That bummed me out.  Then it is an overcast day, rainy and miserable, and it is going to be like that for a few days around here.  That grey, oppressing sky!  It makes me feel like the clouds themselves are pushing down on me, dark forces un-named making it hard to see out of the gloom.  

I frequently get songs stuck in my head, and this morning I woke up humming the harmony from a Dave Matthews Band song, #41.  I know I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but the sax player from DMB died recently, far too young, and there's an evocative solo he had in that song, and thinking about it made me sad.

Add those three things up, and bam, not such a good day in the offing.

Folks who haven't walked down Depression Way will say very un-helpful things like, "Snap out of it.  Its just the blues." or "C'mon, how bad can it be?  Get over it."  Which, as I said, isn't helpful.  Because then you feel guilty for feeling this crappy.  How difficult, truly, is my life?  A roof over my head, enough to eat, I get out of bed every morning, put my feet on the floor and walk.  So much more than so many others, that I shouldn't feel crappy.  That somehow, I ought to be able to 'snap out of it.'  

As I drove to work, I kept saying things to myself like, c'mon, you're going to a job you love.  You're doing well there.  You like it.  Little mind games, to, indeed, try to snap myself out of it.  A little coffee with chocolate (have I mentioned Bellagio sipping chocolate?  Milk+ Bellagio + coffee = yum.) and avoiding listening to the news, instead listening to my "happy" playlist on my iPod, and yeah, it is going to get better.  But I wish it didn't get to the low end of the spectrum in the first place.

Rhythm

When we wore a heart of stone
We wandered to the sea
Hoping to find some comfort there
Yearning to feel free
And we were mesmerized by the lull of the night
And the smells that filled the air
And we laid us down on sandy ground
It was cold but we didn't care

'Cause we were drawn to the rhythm
Drawn into the rhythm of the sea
'Cause we were drawn to the rhythm
Drawn to the rhythm of the sea

~Sarah McLachlan, Drawn To The Rhythm, Solace, 1991

I've fallen in to a rhythm, a routine with the new job, that feels right, somehow, as if things should have been this way a long time ago. Days fly by. Often, the first time I look up after lunch it is after 4. Weeks have disappeared.

"Busy" would be an understatement. If I could tell you, interweb, all about the neat-o projects I'm working on, I would. I can't. Y'all know I don't ever talk about my current employer. That's danger, Will Robinson, danger!

I'm thanking the powers that be for my OCD, though, because my list-making obession skills come in handy to make sure that I don't forget to do something. I feel like a juggler who is having a partner toss them ever more things to juggle, and as if I'm being watched to see when I start dropping balls. Sort of. I don't feel as I did when working for Ye Olde Evile Bank, where the paranoia knew no bounds...Big Brother? Ha! Try Big: Brother, Sister, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin....around every corner was someone waiting to sabotage you. Rather, I feel like I'm being tested, to see where exactly my limits are. She's handling that? Cool, let's see if this overwhelms her. No? Well, add that.

I hate to even say things like this out loud for fear of tempting The Fates, but so far I feel like I'm passing with flying colors. (Does it count if I type it? Hmmm.)

Each week has its goal, things that need accomplished, and while there aren't Monday tasks, Tuesday tasks, et cetera, there is a certain pulse to what goes on each day. It is an odd combination of structure and ever-changing that seems to suit me, as if it was tailor-made.

I've even managed to become an early riser again, tossing off the lingering after-effects of the Lex. I maintain that it was the Lex which caused the complete alteration of my diurnal clock, changing me from a morning person to a night owl. Despite ANY scientific evidence to support that belief. Whatever. I know my own body, and I know how I felt while taking it and once quitting it. I also know that it has taken nearly two months for that inability to rise and shine to fade. It was beyond weird. I didn't want to get out of bed because there wasn't much point (as I saw it) and that was/is part and parcel of depression. But the Lex made me tired, so tired that I couldn't wake, let alone get up. I'd wake when the alarm went off, and think, "Five more minutes." And the next time I opened my eyes, three hours had gone by. Ugh. That really didn't work for me. Bad rhythm!

This rhythm is more subtle, and more to my liking. An ebb and flow that I don't feel like I'm fighting against. Finally.

The point of most of this rambling was to let you know that I won't be able to post daily for a while in the near future, when things get exceedingly hectic for a few weeks. The rhythm then will be a little more staccato, a little more hurry, hurry. I want you to know I haven't slipped back down that well, that I am, in fact, back among the living. Just crazy-busy.

Daily Dose

I had a conversation with someone who suffers from an anxiety disorder, quite different from my depression struggles. He takes Xanax for the anxiety, a dosage of it that I consider quite high, knowing how Xanax affects me. That's not passage of judgment, just observation. I think he needs a lot of it to quell the anxiety.

Like so many folks being treated for mental illnesses, he doesn't want to take the Xanax. Again, I empathize. Unfortunately, the entire class of meds that Xanax springs from don't lend themselves well to quitting cold turkey. You must, must taper the dosage of the benzotropines, because quitting just doesn't work.

Even knowing as I do that quitting my dosage of the anti-depressants would be stupid at best and fatal at worst, that doesn't stop me from foolishly, recklessly, wanting to tamper with my dosage. I'd like to not need the meds. That would be nice. I am not optimistic about my chances of being able to quit the meds at any time in the foreseeable future, though.

With the longer days, and the fact that we actually see the sun in the summer in Oh-hia-ia rather than 100% gloomy grey skies, I'm feeling better. Fantastic, most of the time, actually. As long as I continue the meds. Without them, things aren't so fantastic.

Last week, I had a day where I only took 300 mg of my 450 mg dose of Wellbutrin XL. It wasn't intentional; somehow, I have a bunch of the 300 mg pills from my prior refill, but none of the 150 mg. As a result, the 'old' 300 mgs are upstairs, and the 'new' 300 and 150 mgs are downstairs. I took an allergy pill and a 300 mg, intending to take the 150 mg as soon as I went downstairs, but I never remembered to do that, and I could tell by the evening that I was "off," somehow, like a puzzle missing a key piece.

Another day, I got up and got going, dragging a little, but didn't remember to take the meds until late in the afternoon. Gee, wonder why I was so off my usual form that day? Interestingly, small things that don't bother me when I am taking the meds take on the forms of crises of epic proportions when I am off them. I am more snarly, more apt to make cutting, biting, stinging sarcastic remarks when I don't take them. I struggle to put the bitter queen back into her box when I've not taken the drugs.

All of this brain chemistry alteration bothers me, but like something we know is looming and don't want to think about, I push it away to be concerned about another day. Call it whatever you like, but the fact is that the SSRIs are altering your brain chemistry.

I remember one of my early biology classes, grade 7 or so, where one of our vocabulary words was "drug" and it was defined as 'anything that alters the body's chemistry.' Christo, under that definition, anything you eat or drink is a drug. Food, water, even that sip of iced tea you just took. (Oh, wait, that was me. Have I mentioned? It is so effing hot that I can hardly breathe.) So any medication, then, alters your body's chemistry in some way. Insulin, allergy pills, the analgesics we take for our aches and pains, all of it. If you look at it that way, I suppose, then the alteration of brain chemistry that the SSRIs do isn't such a big deal. Or is that just me, rationalizing?

Reinvention

I have a bunch of posts sitting in my queue. Things that I've written a few paragraphs about, and then either ran out of time to finish, or got hung up on a spot, and moved off from it thinking that inspiration would come along and I'd finish it at some future point.

But a few of those queued posts have been hanging out for more than a year.

Part of my OCD is that I don't like unfinished projects hanging about. They bother me.

When I wake up in the middle of the night, often I can't go back to sleep because I lie there and think about what's gone wrong, what's undone, what I've screwed up, what I can fix, what I can't change, what I should do tomorrow....shit that I can't turn off. It was worse, lots worse, when I was more of a mess. Now it is more of a mild annoyance than a debilitating, paralyzing problem, but it IS an annoyance.

It makes me want to reach for the sleeping pills. They don't turn off the inner monologue, exactly. They do make it harder to hear, though, because they force your brain to kind of shut off. The problem with that is twofold. First, I've weaned myself off of the Ambien, a process that was by no means fun, and I've no desire to repeat it.

Secondly, well....there isn't really a secondly. This is kind of like the real estate axiom, that location, location, location are the three most important things when it comes to purchasing real estate. I've weaned myself from the Ambien, and I've weaned myself from the Ambien. Granted, without it this past winter, I'd have slipped farther and further, because I couldn't sleep. I could NOT sleep. Without the prescription, I'd get about an hour, maybe three at the most, and the pills gave me about five at a stretch.

Depression makes sleeping hard. Lack of sleep makes the depression worse. It is a miserable cycle, one that feeds on itself. Hearing that internal "you didn't do XYZ" nagging at me didn't help, either. Inte alls, as we'd say in Swedish. (Betcha can figure that one out without me translating.)

So what to do with all those dangling posts? I see them every time I log in to Blogger. Maybe I should delete them. That feels like giving up to me, though, so they'll probably hang out until I finish them, or until I decide that they are indeed worthless, and delete them.

I have a novel from the library where the author talks about the book having been re-purposed from its original incarnation. Id' be nice if I could reinvent some of those posts. My current focus, though, is outside of the computer and away from my writing. Which is OK for now.

Boom de ah da

Once again, the Discovery channel has a commercial that is pretty unforgettable, in an annoying, stuck-in-your-head-but-its-kinda-cute way. Yes, "boom de ah da" is what they're saying in that commercial, the one that is nearly indecipherable to mostly deaf in my left ear me. I looked it up on their website, so the wording is accurate. Part of their "the world is just awesome" marketing campaign. Damn, they're some smart folks! That campaign is bloody brilliant.

(Do you want to watch television commercials on your computer? I don't, but what do I know? You can watch the commercial, should you be inclined, at discovery.com)

What strikes me every time that I see the longer 30 second spot, is how much fun Mike Rowe and the weapons guy, Mack, have with what they're doing. Mack, in particular, is looking joyful as he's blasting the hell out of something.

I've never been a proponent of the military, or of weapons in any form, but I find myself ceasing channel surfing when Future Weapons is on the Discovery Channel. He's got this whole bald, body-builder thing working for him, which makes the show not hard to watch, even sans sound. But WITH sound....oh, be still my heart! He's got a fabulous voice. Soft and growly, but still tough as nails.

I've been noticing voices a lot lately. Listening, really listening to tone, timbre, pitch, as I have not since my early teen years when I was studying voice with thoughts of operatic glory dancing in my head. I've got a passable singing voice, but I figured out that I'd never be Maria Callas, so I got a practical business degree in college instead of studying music. Silly me, why would I have wanted that?

I'm feeling like the world is indeed awesome these days. I'm still taking my Wellbutrin XL every. single. day. even though I'm feeling good enough most days to think that I might not need it anymore. Believe me, I know that just quitting taking it would be dumb, dumb, d-u-m-b. That's not the path that I am to tread in this life, apparently.

During a discussion with several friends who have been walking this same road with me the other day, the topic of "needing" versus not needing the meds came up. At the moment, I'm OK with the fact that I need the meds. To function. To not give up on myself entirely. To be able to breathe.

I've gone through phases with it; sometimes I want to quit them cold turkey, walk away from the treatment that is working for me. Why? Because even as I preach against it, the thought is still out there that taking anti-depressants makes you weak. Means something is fundamentally 'wrong' with you, something that you ought to be able to just brush off, ignore, move on from, but you can't. Therefore, you're weak, not as strong as "everyone else" who doesn't need them.

Here's a tip, honey.

You've got to do what works for you. Period. If that includes taking the meds, so be it. I can tell you (with no hesitation, embarrassment, or bravado) that without the meds, I would not be alive today. I was never suicidal, don't misunderstand me here, this is vital. I mean that I'd have retreated so far into the disease that I wouldn't be here, where I am now. I think I'd be in some kind of catatonia, in some ward.

Friends tell me that they can hear the difference in my voice as things have improved for me. I don't know how they can hear it when we're talking on the phone or IM-img. That prompted the listening more closely, trying to figure it out. And that listening has proved fascinating, addictive. Typically, though, listening to HOW something is being said sometimes makes it hard to pay attention to WHAT is being said.

I don't mind so much asking people to repeat themselves, anyone who knows me knows I'm hard of hearing. But it does make me look very silly, I think, because it looks like I'm listening sooo intently....and I am, but not to the actual message....and I still can't hear what's being said. Hence the inability to distinguish the "boom de ah da" from the nonsensical syllables of the song.


*shrug*

Human nature, not just the world, is awesome. Fascinating. I'll be listening.

I mizzes you!

Once upon a time, I kvetched that returning to work full time after being laid off last summer was going to cut into my available blogging time.

And then some!!

Now I'm not only working full time, I'm staying late at work, working through my lunch time, excited about what I'm doing for a living, into a routine that has me not spending any time at all on the 'puter in the evenings. I'm behind on a whole lot of correspondence, both real-world and webby.

I miss my writing. I miss working on the book, which I haven't done since March. That's a whole 'nother story....but y'all know I luurves me a tangent.

My fears of being less prolific a writer when I'm in a better mental state turned out to not be unfounded. I think, unfortunately, that when I'm in a bad mental place, I'm a better writer. There's a fine, fine line between depths of despair and that place where I was churning out 10-15 pages of the novel a day, though. This past winter, I was perhaps more of a mess than I was in the spring of 2007, when I admitted that there was a problem and I needed some help.

Doc gave me an additional anti-depressant this past winter to add to my med regimen, and it helped, but not a lot. I couldn't write, hell, I could barely get out of bed. The days got longer, though, and the sun returned from its winter hiatus. I started to feel better, the job situation started to look like it might change (I think the old job was at least 85% of the problem) and suddenly, whoa, I was feeling like I wasn't worthless any more.

But the creative spark hasn't come back from wherever it disappeared to at the end of last summer. Writing here on the blog has never been a problem. The problem is that the fiction writing isn't happening. The novel writing came from nowhere, and disappeared back into nowhere. I miss that, but I accept it (well, mostly), because I no longer feel so horrible.

I also miss writing a daily update here on the blog. I regret that I haven't had a lot of time for it since I started this new dreamy job. My dad has something that he's said my entire life that I mostly am annoyed by, although it is true. Dad says, "Everyone has the same amount of time. 24 hours in a day. It is about what you choose to do with that time." Lately, I've been choosing to sleep a little more and blog a little less. I like sleep! And I'm managing it without nightly sleeping pills. I do still take them, but not every night. Thankfully, because I think they're more dangerous for the potential of dependence than the anti-d's.

I'm constantly thinking of ideas for blog posts, thinking about ways to turn the things I see and think about into snapshots of life, stories that I can tell. But by the time I get home each night, I'm wiped out, in need of sleep to face the next day. There are posts galore sitting in my mental queue, even a few that I've scribbled ideas into Google Docs, but they haven't been finished. I miss it, I miss reading everyone else's blogs, I miss all of ya!

Still here, doing much better, working! But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you. I am. More soon.

Dawn of the Day

With the days getting longer, and the sun showing its face here in Oh-hia-ia, it makes me wonder how I was having so much trouble getting out of bed and on my feet all winter.

I start my new job today. I'm a little nervous, a lot excited, and as usual, running late, so you'll have to forgive the brevity of the post.

My biggest problem this morning?

I don't know what to wear.

Gain

I had been avoiding my bathroom scale. Tossing dirty clothes and towels on top of it to cover it up, so I'd forget it was there. Except that didn't work; whenever I got up to use the potty in the middle of the night, the glass disc where you stand would be glinting out from under all the dirty clothes in the light of the night-light. "I'm still heeeeeeerreee!" it would whisper to me at 2 AM. "I know you're avoiding meeee!"

For good reason, too. I have gotten out of the habit of daily gym, run on the treadmill, stretch, do crunches, do push-ups (getting rid of that flabby upper arm was priority #1, and push-ups are the only way I know to do it), do some yoga, and then move on with my day. Out of that habit for a handful of reasons, absolutely not one of them a 'good' reason, they're all excuses.

In the dark part of the winter, when the snow and the cold and the dark began to seriously wear on me, there just wasn't much point to my depressed mind, in getting out of bed. Then starting the Lexapro in addition to the Wellbutrin, in an effort to pull me out of one of the darkest periods of my life *ever,* the Lex made me tired. Really, really, really tired. I took the Lex for two months, during which time it seems to have managed to completely change my internal clock/diurnal rhythms to no longer an early morning person.

No, I did not consult with my doc or the shrink about discontinuing the Lex. The simple fact is that it was too expensive to add to my med regimen, and since it was making me sleep more and be even more reluctant to get out of bed, it seemed to me the better part of wisdom to give it up. I'm doing all right without it. I think that's mostly because the days are longer and the weather is better, not because I no longer need it. I'd be trying to fool both you and myself should I claim otherwise.

So not a single one of those is a good reason for being out of the habit of working out. Let's call a spade a spade, then, and call it what it really is: laziness, and my usual self-defeatist principals working against something good happening. The fact that I can recognize this for what it is, though, shows that therapy = progress.

When I did finally bite the bullet, and step on the scale (first thing in the morning, after using the restroom, not a single bite to eat beforehand, and not wearing a stitch of clothing) I thought I was prepared for it to show a higher number. The clothes that had been loose are fitting fine or in some cases are snug, so I knew I'd gained some weight. 5-6 pounds, I thought, no big.

Yeah.

The number on the scale was nearly 10 pounds more than what it had been. Eeep. Eeeeeeeeeeppppp!!!!

Then I was angry. I've worked too damn hard to get healthy and thin, and I refuse to gain all of that weight back. I've come too far, and I am NOT going backwards. Hell, I refuse to gain an ounce of it back, so obviously, the scale is wrong. Uh-huh. What was that we used to say in the early 90s? Not!!!

I've allowed some of my old eating habits to creep back, too. A conversation with my mother reminded me that we share an addiction that can be as lethal, as deadly, as any narcotic: food. I have replaced my processed sugar addiction with more natural sweeteners, which are fine in moderation, but there are other temptations. There is no longer granular (white) sugar in my house. When I'm craving a bad 'sweet' fix, I take a swig of apple cider, or make a cup of herbal tea with a generous spoonful of a spectacular find: Really Raw Honey. (yum! I could write a whole post about that stuff, but I shall admirably restrain myself. Buy some, do!)

But there are other food addictions in that bunch: carbs, carbs, carbs, bread rice and pasta are all large weaknesses of mine. We've been eating out more than is smart, and I've allowed myself to mostly eat exactly what I want at restaurants, instead of being a pain in the ass to wait staff and specifying exactly how something should be prepared for me. That started on our vacation in Florida, where I allowed myself to eat a whole lot of a south Florida/Caribbean regional specialty: conch fritters. Deep fried conch fritters. Plus the temptation of trying all sorts of things unavailable here in Oh-hi-ia: Caffe Cubano (an espresso-esque coffee with PURE CANE SUGAR, the liquid from a stalk of sugarcane, added served hot and super-sweet, woooo what a a caffeine fix!) and all sorts of other Cuban foods, along with booze, booze, booze! We were on vacation, why not?

Well, because then your clothes don't fit, dumbass!

Getting back into the habit of the gym has been tough. I managed to make it two times last week. Today being Tuesday and all, I wish I could say I'd been there two times THIS week, but I made it this morning, so that's one. My work schedule has been interfering with my Pilates classes, which is very annoying. I made it to a Pilates class a week or so ago, and OUCH! I've lost a whole lot of strength and muscle tone that I had from Pilates. I won't make it to both classes this week either, which is frustrating.

I wish I could pinpoint when exactly I quit the daily gym routine, because then I'd be able to figure out how much weight I'd gained each month. Which is a silly thing to obsess about, anyway....I didn't put on 10 pounds in one month, there is nothing seriously wrong with me that could contribute to the weight gain, this is laziness and sloppiness and nothing else.

But remind me of that tomorrow morning at 5, will you, please? Because I still can't figure out a way to be dragging my ass out of bed at a normal time. (Yeah, 5 AM was normal for me, until very recently.) I find that unless I get to the gym when I first get out of bed, and preferably when they open their doors, I'm unlikely to go at all. The place is so darned busy any other time of the day that it irritates the hell out of me. I pay them almost $600 a year for a membership; I don't think they should allow so many people to join that there are no parking spaces available. Ugh, that's a rant for another day. And another excuse: I don't want to go because it is too busy, whaaaaa.

Multiple alarms haven't worked; having coffee brewed and waiting when I would get out of bed has also not worked; my clothes fitting tighter hasn't been motivation either. And yes, I have tried heading to bed earlier, too. I'm sleeping (knock on wood) with no sleeping pills right now, not over the counter, not prescription, nothing, so curtailing the sleepy pills isn't a suggestion either. I'm not sleeping well, waking at least once every hour, but I'm hoping that evens out and that I only need to use the Ambien when my anxiety levels are particularly high. Sleeping, for the moment, isn't the problem; waking is.

Questions, comments, suggestions?

Spleepy

I don't usually sleep well. This is something that I've bitched frequently about, as proper sleep is so important to being healthy. Not just your physical health, but mental health too. Depression makes it tough to sleep or makes you want to sleep all the time, yet another lovely paradox of the disease.

When the depression got really bad, before I got any treatment for it at all, I was sleeping about 3-4 hours a night. When I started getting help, it improved a little bit, to 4-5 hours a night.

In the last week, my sleep habits have improved pretty drastically. I've been taking Ambien for my sleeping trouble for a long time, nearly every night. I'd hazard a guess that I've been taking that on and off for about a year. So I can't attribute this recent improvement to the Ambien.

In October of 2006, I started working out 6 days a week in an effort, initially, anyway, to get better sleep. That didn't help my sleep. I lost weight, and I was hopeful that being more healthy physically would help me sleep more. It didn't, really.

Today, I'm 43 pounds lighter than I was in October of 2006, with about another 20 pounds left to lose. Undoubtedly, I am in far better shape than I was, physically. My whole lifestyle has changed, my eating habits have made a 180 degree turnaround from where they were. I can't attribute the better sleeping to the lifestyle changes, because I would have been sleeping better a long time ago, not just in the last week.

I'm sleeping between 7 and 9 hours lately. Not an un-interrupted 7 to 9 hours, that would be apparently far too much to ask, but un-interrupted two to five hour bursts, and enough of them to get what I consider nearly adequate sleep. Finally.

See, when I was a kid, I slept 10 to 12 hours a night. I need my sleep. My family can attest to the fact that without enough sleep, I'm supremely unpleasant to be around. I've never been ashamed or embarrassed to admit that I simply need the proper amount of rest. Eight hours is good, ten is preferable. Six is about the bare minimum of acceptability. So you can imagine what it was doing to me to get 4-5 hours for just about 2 years. Devastating me, essentially. I have no doubt that my mental health suffered even more because of the lack of sleep.

(When we're listing reasons Lucy doesn't have kids, sleep is up there on that list. Baby=no sleep.)

What's changed? The only thing that's different is the Lexapro. My job stress is just as bad as it was at the non-profit, although it is a different sort of stress, it is just as high or higher than when I knew that the non-profit was on the verge of closing. I'm exercising less lately than that gold standard of 6 days a week. (It pains me to admit that. I'm not sure what is the de-motivational factor there, but I need to get the fuck over it and back to a regular 6 day a week schedule to lose those additional 20 lbs and to get in shape for the May 2 race I'm going to run in, a 10 K.)

Dr. H gave me samples of the Lexapro with instructions to take 1/2 of a pill daily, 5 mg. He also told me that when I had a handle on whether or not that was going to help (a week or so) to adjust the dosage up or down as I thought necessary, as long as I kept in touch with him so that he knew what I was doing. Half a pill was helpful, but damn, still not enough to push me over the edge into being able to get out of bed and be back to being me. So I upped it to a whole pill, 10 mg. About a week ago.

Isn't that interesting?

So Wellbutrin+Lexapro+Ambien=sleep.

A friend who is a nurse reacted with alarm when I told her about the addition of Lexapro to the Wellbutrin. She told me that over time, those medications work less well, something that I think I can attest to, as I've needed to up the dosage on the Wellbutrin several times to get it to the right place. She also warned me that sometimes the side effects of the meds can become permanent, and that they're often very difficult to discontinue taking, when you think you're ready to get off of them. My one and only lingering side effect is the hand tremor, which is worse some days than others. I'd rather that didn't become permanent. It makes me look nervous when I am not, and it makes me feel like I've got Parkinson's. She asked if maybe the cure isn't worse than the disease.

Emphatically, no. Unconditionally, no.

Getting the proper amount of rest has been unbelievably helpful. I wake up feeling still tired for a little while, but about an hour after I get up, I'm refreshed and nearly ready to face the day.

The addiction to the Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee might be something we need to talk about, though, because before that cup o' decaf joe, facing the day is unthinkable.

This is a fine stew.

I went to see the doctor yesterday, braving cold temperatures, bad roads, and heavy snow, because I think the depression is backsliding.

While I was there, of course, I took the opportunity to have him look in my aching ears to make sure that the creeping crud has not turned into an ear infection (thankfully, no) or strep throat (again, no) or something more than what I thought it was, a simple bacterial sinus infection.

Before I begin to ruminate on the disease of depression (yes, again) I want to share some more upbeat news; the only benefit, as I see it, to having a cold is this. According to the scale, in the last week I've lost 7 pounds. I'm not hungry, the only upside to not being able to breathe and being so dizzy from the congestion in my ears that elevation changes, going from sitting to standing, were a potential fainting spell. At the moment, I weigh less than when I got married, nearly eight years ago, at 25 years old. Woot!

As difficult and painful as it is, I am always truthful with my family doctor. I don't sugar-coat what I'm feeling, nor what I think is really going on, when I talk to him. Sitting in the exam room, waiting for him, always freezing my butt off, I'm usually so nervous that I'm nauseated. I feel that way at the shrink's sometimes, too. Spilling your guts to someone who isn't your closest friend, someone who isn't already inside your heart and head, is damn difficult.

The first thing he said when he walked in the room was, "Look at you!! You're looking fantastic!"

I cracked up. "I wish I felt as good as I look," I told him. "Between the cold and the depression, if I looked like I feel, children would run away from me crying."

The cold has just about killed my vocal cords, so even talking is tough. But I told him about the dark days I've been having. Why I think that's been happening. What I'm willing and not willing to do about it. How I remember he wanted to add Effexor to my regime of Wellbutrin.

He tends to pooh-pooh my worries over side effects of the meds and my fears of becoming psychologically dependent on them. He listens, but either tries to soothe my fears or brush them away. He always tells me the same thing that someone else said to me recently; just because a side effect is listed in the medication's literature, that does not mean that YOU are going to have that side effect. Those are potentials, not necessarily realities.

Wellbutrin XL is a SNRI; Serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. I'll allow you to google that one yourself, or click here for Wiki's definition. The drug blocks some of your brain's ability to absorb serotonin and norepinephrine. As I understand it, anyway. This is part of the chemical imbalance in your brain that I'm always talking about, which I firmly believe is the cause of depression.

It bears repeating: depression is NOT about being sad. Depression is about an inability to do things that you normally enjoy, a dimming of the lights in your life, making you feel like you're metaphorically stumbling around in the dark. Depression is about not having the will to do anything; it isn't that you can just 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' or 'snap out of it'. You certainly don't want to feel this way, but not only can you not stop it, it is hard to see sometimes that it is even happening to you.

So the meds fix the chemical imbalance in your brain. Were it any other disease, diabetes, for example, no one would hesitate to take the meds. You'd die without the insulin used to treat diabetes. But it is perfectly acceptable to urge someone to not take anti-depressants.

I keep telling myself that taking the meds isn't a cop-out. It is a very difficult thing to reconcile. At the moment, I'm OK with the fact that a)I need them and b)I may need them for the rest of my life. But I go through stages with that, where sometimes it isn't OK that I need them, that I ought to be able to cope on my own. FFS, what does it say about me as a person that I can't cope on my own without a chemical crutch? That I'm weak? That I'm incapable of dealing with stress? That I'd be better off locked in a ward? Eeek.

So one med is bad enough, even when you believe that there is not much you can do on your own without some help for your body to process the excess stress hormones that you produce. But I knew going to the doc's this time would lead to a second med. And if all of the above is true of me with one medication, what does it say about me that I need two? Ouch.

He told me that he'd had a plan all along, that when the Wellbutrin didn't work for me at the smallest dose, that he'd had a contingency. That's great, wish he'd let me in on that one. Seriously. But he gave me samples of Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. This is a different type of anti-depressant; again, if you want the technical details, check Wiki. According to the doc, my depression is such that I need both; he claims that this will enable me to be the person I remember wistfully right now.

We'll see. I'm still working on what I believe with this disease.

Not again.

'Cause I am barely breathing,
And I can't find the air

~Duncan Sheik, Barely Breathing, Duncan Sheik, 1995

I haven't posted anything for a few days because I haven't had very many ideas for posts. I've a few half-written posts, but mostly, when I sit down in front of the computer, I've been at a loss for words.

The darkness is creeping up on me again. I think. I want to curl up into bed all the time, I'm exhausted for no reason. I don't feel capable of doing anything, barely moving, barely breathing. I present a pretty together face to the outside world, but when I'm alone, for the first time in my life, I'm lonely.

I treasure time to myself. Normally, anyway. Time for solitude is something that I require in order to keep from going batshit insane. I love traveling alone, time spent wandering a bookstore on my own, reading under a tree in the summer with no distractions. But lately, I'm feeling like something's missing when I'm alone.

I'm terrified that the 'I want to sleep constantly' is a symptom of the depression backsliding. I've had a couple of these events over the last year, when the depression worsens. You'd think I'd be able to recognize it for what it is, having a bit of experience with it. Not so much. I'm unsure if the sleepiness is a natural inclination because its dark, and cold, and not a hell of a lot is happening in Ohio in February, or if it is indicative of a miasma rising up around me.

I made an appointment with my family doctor for next week; its been about 4 months since I've talked with him about the meds, and it is time, even if we make no changes. What upsets me about this is that he said last time we spoke if the 450 mg/day of Wellbutrin wasn't getting it, then he'd add Effexor. I don't want a second medication. Plus the side effects of it listed on Drugs.com scare the hell out of me; sleepiness, suicidal thoughts (!!!!!!), extreme thirst, higher blood pressure. I'm already thirsty all the time, and I already bruise easily, another potential side effect. It also looks to me like I wouldn't be able to take my sleeping pill if I was taking Effexor, which would be extremely bad. On the upside, it is used to treat anxiety. My anxiety levels haven't been this high since.....high school? When I was wound so tight that any tighter and I'd have broken, splintered into millions of bits.

Fret, worry, fret, worry, fret, worry. Ugh, I'm sick of this cycle.

Plexi

I was at the eye doctor's (yes, again) trying yet another pair of contacts out yesterday. The original contacts were grossly uncomfortable. In addition, annoyingly, they didn't enable me to really see any better than without them. We tried any number of combinations, switching strengths, switching which eye the stronger contact is worn in; none of it really seems to work for me. And driving in the dark? I couldn't see at all. Dangerous.

I asked for a different brand of contacts. Anything but what I'd been wearing. The new ones were instantly more comfortable, I noticed an immediate change. But something had been bothering me; what if it was the meds that was making my vision worse (some weird-ass voodoo side effect) or maybe they were more irritating to my eyes because of the meds. So I asked the eye doc; could any of my prescriptions be causing some of these problems?

He pulled a PDR off of a shelf, and thumbed through it while glancing at my chart. "hmmm, Singular," he mused.

"That's not the one that concerns me," I told him. "What about the Wellbutrin?"

He raised his eyebrows slightly, but didn't comment, flipping closer to the end of the book.

"You know what that's for, right?" I asked him. (Yeah, yeah, he's a doctor, but I'm thinking that eye doctors don't write so many prescriptions for anti-depressants.)

"Yes, an anti-depressant, right?" He asked.

"Yes; I'm on a fairly high dose of it," I told him.

450 mg/day of Wellbutrin XL is the maximum recommended dosage. My cute family doctor tells me that it would be OK to exceed that if the effectiveness wears off again as it did when I was taking 150 mg/day and then when we upped it to 300 mg/day. I disagree; but I digress. Back to the chat with the eye doctor.

He didn't ask me why such a high dose. But I'm decent at reading people sometimes, and I could tell he was curious. He did ask if it was working for me. Briefly, I explained that the 150 had helped, 300 was better, but that to come out of the dark, I'd needed the 450.

"It is hard to explain to someone who's never been there," I told him, "but depression is like this giant inertia that surrounds you, making it hard to breathe, hard to move. It isn't that you don't necessarily want to do something, it is that you almost can't. It is like sitting in a dark room; 150 made me feel like someone turned the lights on, but not up; at 300, it was like a dimmer switch being turned up, but it took the 450 to turn the lights on."

I told him if it bothered him for me to be so frank about it that he should tell me; but he said no, that he wanted to understand. The PDR tells us that blurred vision IS a side effect of Wellbutrin, but that it is a very rare one. And my vision started to get worse before I started taking the med. Days when I've forgotten to take it, I see no better than on days that I do take it, so I don't really think the med is causing the vision deterioration. We'll see what the new contacts bring.

Today, I was talking to a friend that I haven't seen since last spring; she knew that I started taking the med, but its been a long while since we had a chat. She too has lost a ton of weight, and she too has been battling depression. Sans medication. I was telling her about the eye doctor, and she told me about how she's been coping. She's doing well.

She described the way that she'd felt in a manner that I thought was both interesting and on point.

"I felt like I was behind a wall of Plexiglas," she told me, "and I was scratching at the glass, banging against it. I could see everyone else, but I felt like I couldn't be there."

What is interesting about that is one of my sisters had told me that she felt like I wasn't 'there' sometimes when she was talking to me when I was in worse shape.

Feelings of alienation are common in people suffering from depression. Trying to explain it to someone who has only been outside of that glass wall is nearly impossible.

My friend C said something else that stuck with me. She said as she's begun to feel better, she feels, "more like me. More like the C I used to be. I see her, and I recognize her. I've missed her."


Me too, honey. Me too.

And you call yourself a....?

The other day, I was at a women's health thing, a community event that I was working.

The keynote speaker was a woman who is a therapist, with a thriving private practice. Someone who works as a motivational speaker, and has even been on a popular daytime talk show. She was amazing, and inspirational, mostly. She talked about how women take care of everyone but themselves. The kids. Maybe their elderly parents, or their partner's elderly parents. Women choose caretaker careers, and then take care of everyone at work, too.

But we don't take time for ourselves. Know why? Because "good girls aren't selfish." C'mon, when was the first time you remember being told to not be selfish? My bet is before kindergarten.

I preach this to friends all the time, reminding them that no one is going to take care of you BUT you. I do things that are incredibly self-indulgent, on a regular basis, because no one is going to do it for me. But that's a lifelong philosophy of mine, that its OK to indulge yourself in little luxuries like a massage or a pedicure or hell, even some time to read a trashy novel if that's what you want to do. Not daily, maybe not even monthly, but from time to time. So this speaker's message of valuing yourself wasn't lost on me, nor was it particularly revolutionary for me either.

What DID make me sit up and take notice is something I'm still very puzzled over.

She was talking about our perceptions of other people's lives. I'm paraphrasing, but here's the gist of what she said.

Maybe you've got a neighbor or a casual acquaintance who you look at and think, "Damn, her life is perfect. Look at her perfectly clean house, fabulous spouse, great car, fantastic job (or whatever you happen to admire about this woman)." But what you don't know is that maybe her life isn't so perfect. Or if she is all perky and happy, maybe she's on 200 mg of Prozac every day.

And when she said that, the audience laughed.

Laughed.

Roared with laughter, really.

I sat there, appalled, wondering how many other women besides me in that room are medicated for a mental illness, dying a little inside as a room full of their contemporaries AND a mental health professional belittled their brave choice to admit that they've got a problem and the decision to take medication for it. I took a seat shortly before she began, as I was working the event, and ended up with seat front and center as a result. Consequently, I know she saw that I was the only one not laughing.

I'm still disgusted that her casual remark might have dissuaded someone in that audience from seeking help for depression or frankly, any other mental illness.

After the speech, I introduced myself and talked briefly with her about time management. I didn't tell her why I wasn't amused, nor did she ask. I could hardly have berated her for the remark. My employer is unaware that I'm being treated for depression. I'm 'out' about it both here online and out in the real world, but don't feel that I need to share that information with my bosses unless or until it affects my ability to do my job. (Note please that I would never lie if they asked about it.)

What an uphill battle those of us who fight this disease EVERY DAY have to struggle against to get out of bed, second guess ourselves about our decision to medicate ourselves or not, fight the personal demons that tell us we're worthless, useless, unloved, unwanted, unlovable. And then someone we recognize as a professional in the mental health field makes fun of a medication that has probably kept countless people alive. Un-fucking-be-lieveable.

I wanted to introduce myself and say, "450/mg Wellbutrin XL. Daily." Wonder what she would have said.

Fell On Black Days

Whatsoever I feel has
come to light
Whatsoever I fought off
became my life
Just when every day
Seemed to greet me with a smile
Sunspots are fadin'
Now I'm doin' time
Now I'm doin' time

'Cause I fell on
Black days

~Soundgarden, Fell On Black Days, Superunknown, 1994

Its a rough day today. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I'm feeling like I was hit by a semi.

Part of living with this disease is that you know there is still so much unknown, no discernible reasons why it takes the course that it does. If there WAS a pattern, reasons why there's highs and lows, I think 'they' could treat it better.

Patients, me included, want to self-medicate when things don't go so well, or when things are going great; we think that we can quit taking the meds when things are looking up, and consider all sorts of other options (like booze or upping the dosage ourselves) when things are down.

There's all sorts of possible explanations; its overcast and cloudy today, and that makes me want to stay in bed; sometimes hormonal shifts, part of the normal menstrual cycle, make your moods go wonky; I'm frustrated over some other areas of my life that we don't talk about online; the whole glasses/contacts thing is pissing me the hell off, I've been back to the eye doctor's twice and still can't see well out of the contacts; pick any one of those. To a person suffering with depression, any one or any combination of the above could sometimes be enough to be tail-spinning. And sometimes, there's no reason at all.

I was complaining about the FDA just the other day; that whole non-labeling of cloned beef thing. But they're not just the food-checkers, they're also the drug regulators. A friend sent me a link to this Yahoo! News article which suggests that the drug companies AND the FDA bury studies that don't show the meds in a favorable light. Fan-fucking-tastic. The major med that they're talking about, Zoloft, isn't my poison of choice, but what's good for one company is good for another, no?

I also skipped the gym this morning, and won't have time the rest of the day to get to it, which doesn't help.

Ranting about it sometimes does, though.

Listening to: Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, Ahi Wela, Alone in Iz World, 2001
(Cheerful, sunny, Hawai'ian music)((that helps sometimes too))

Loser

I had one of those days yesterday where I lost absolutely everything I touched. Keys, lost in my giant new briefcase/purse. My phone, usually clipped to my hip; the dress I had on yesterday made that tough, so I'd put it down on a flat surface, and bam, it'd be gone. The headset for my phone, which goes flashy-blinky, so I take it off when I'm talking to someone face to face. I'd take it off, set it down, and then not be able to find it. That shiz makes me nuts, makes me feel like I've lost more of my mind.

But I think I've lost something else, and I think it has a lot to do with the meds. I have a fearsome temper. Really. I know, I express anger about women's issues and politics all the time, but in the world outside of the computer, I have a yelling streak that might surprise you. Or, rather, I should say I *had*. Nothing too much gets me super-pissed off these days. Sure, advancing age makes you mellower, and working with terminally ill children taught me that there is so much that isn't worth getting upset over, but since the dosage for my meds has been adjusted to a level that seems to be working for me, I'm not quick to anger about anything.

I was thinking about this because of something that happened at work. Since I don't talk about work online, I'll just tell you that this boiled down to a clear case of sexism, which is enough to send me into orbit. Two or three years ago, this would have had me storming into the office, and furiously having it out with the person who I saw as the problem. I've never been a violent woman, but I promise that anyone within hearing range would have known exactly what I was upset about, because the volume? I can project that. (Thank you, voice coach!)

Instead, I handled it another way entirely, and I think that there's a chance that there will be a good resolution to a bad problem. Worked out calmly and rationally. Huh. You can do that? In'trustin.

I was offended, and annoyed, but not furious. Couldn't really get worked up over it.

I don't really like knowing that it must be the meds, because nothing else has changed. I got into an...ahem...argument with someone recently, and the day it happened, I hadn't taken my meds. So they're keeping me on a sort-of even keel, not just helping with the depression. Instead of reassuring me, that makes me pretty worried, anxious, again, about are the meds making me a different person? Someone less recognizable as myself, or are they rather helping me to be a better person. I don't know.

I don't think I mind losing the temper. Much. Sometimes a good screaming hissy fit is a good thing, just like every now and then we all need a good cry. But what happens when you don't have that emotional outlet available to you?