Big Pharma

As much as I have problems with "big pharma" and profiting on necessary medications and life saving treatments, I also have so many problems with people who try to tell me that they're just pumping me full of poison, or that I should boycott big pharma.  I don't think they understand just how much I need the SSRIs I take every morning.  And when I say I need them, I don't mean I'd die without their presence in my body (though I would go through serious physical ramifications if I were to suddenly stop without properly titrating off of them, many SSRIs affect cardiac nerves).  However, I would go back to the very poor life style I had before starting them.

I need my antidepressants to get out of bed in the morning. I need them to will myself to eat.  I need them to convince myself to do all the basic things necessary to support my own life.

I haven't been poisoned, it isn't all in my mind, and I'm not addicted.

I'm sick.

It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, and I still struggle with reminding myself that I'm allowed to have bad days, I'm allowed to have down days.  But I stopped my medication for a while, and I was reminded just how bad it was before.  I was reminded of the time my partner tried to get me to go on a walk around the neighborhood.  The second my house was out of view I burst into tears, I was panicking, and I needed to go back to bed....where I'd been for three days straight.  I stopped getting up but to go to the bathroom.  I slept more than I've ever slept in my life, including when I was a baby.  I ate only what I was coerced to eat.  I interacted with netflix more than my family and friends.  I wasn't just sad, I was completely desolate. And more than anything, I was terrified.

Every time I had to do something real, something "adult", something more than pissing, sleeping, or eating, I'd go into a panic.  I would cry, and gasp for breath, have to fight with every inch of my body not to curl into a ball or collapse on the floor.  I felt like a mummy, as if someone had removed all the organs from my body, and I was filled with air, dirty, dark, air.  Everything was dread.

This happened when three of my friends wanted to celebrate my birthday with me in a low key way, being very understanding of my mental state.

I can't go back to that.  I have so much to detangle and yet feel so empty and flat, but at the same time, I can function.  I can see my friends, and smile, and talk to them.  I can actually get out of bed with only a few minutes of pep talk, instead of hours ultimately resulting in me staying put.  I can enjoy food, and showers, and getting dressed.  I can be a human again, a real person.

So don't tell me that I am being poisoned, don't tell me you understand, don't tell me you've been depressed before and that the drugs just fucked you up more.

You've never been me before, and you can't know what I've been through, nor can I know what you've been through.

The Resolution.

As it approaches the end of the second day of this New Year, I finally start to tackle this resolution I made for myself.  As always, I'm procrastinating. 

2014 was a complicated year for me, for many reasons.  The most important thing that happened to me this year was I reached "stability" in my depression and anxiety.  The truth is, I take the pills, and do the therapy, and somehow I'm left with a giant tangle of complex, nuanced, unnamed emotions that I can't even begin to understand.  This ultimately leaves me feeling very neutral and flat.  I'm so full of emotions that I feel empty.  I've always been so used to having such extreme emotions, ranging all across the board. And for a long time, the manic highs were better and longer lasting than the depressive lows, and then I got older, experienced trauma, experienced life, and the dips got deeper and deeper and wider and wider.   So I took the dive into the inexact science of psycho-pharmacology, a subject I happen to study, and am left with....a giant pit of what? I still have my intense emotions, passions, opinions, they just happen all at once now, all the time.  So when you average it all out, I'm just flat.

So, I suppose, this is my attempt at slowly pulling the strings out of the yarn ball, little by little.  Perhaps I can make sense of them if I put them to words, lay them all out straight before me, and relieve some of the pressure from my chest.  I'm sure I can fit them all in there if they weren't so disorganized.

As it stands, my resolution is to write in this journal of sorts.  Every day. Or...at least as often as I can remember and actually work up the energy to do it.  I hate the feel of paper which is why I've never kept a journal before, and now I'm at a point in my life where every time I think about starting to chronical my thoughts, a wave of anxiety washes over me, traveling down my back until I feel it tingling in the pits of my feet.  Yes, my feet have pits.  Even thinking about writing and my mind starts to get jumbled and confused, my thoughts collide and jump over and through one another, until they're just as tangled as my emotions.

But I'm determined.  I'm determined to do something every day that scares me, even if it's just writing down my mess of a mind.  I'm determined to regain my life, little by little, and bring myself to a more stable stability.  One which is actually sustainable.  I'm determined to feel again, even if it means going to the bottom every once in a while.

I think I'm trying to be poetic, because of course there is part of me which thinks maybe some day someone will discover this blog and read it, or maybe I'll share it.  And I want people to think I'm deep, and interesting, and oh so insightful.  But honestly, I just need a place to vent and process.

I need a place to let go.

I'm resolving to forgive myself.  And I think this might be the right place to start that journey.