Hey hey hey Funseekers.
Once again I reach into the (remote) bowels of the interweb in order to vent my overshared woes. It has been over a year since I have last posted anything, and I figure the latest developments in my life deem a renewal of the Smoking in my Pyjamas blog.
I loathe the idea of having to update what has been going on the past 'howeverlong', but I think it's necessary in order to provide some context. So let's just go the lazy route. Point form!
1. I am still with the same partner. We are still in love. I think we decided to create every possible relationship-challenging situation known to mankind, and against all odds are still in it to win it, so to speak.
2. Relationship challenging situations? We bought a business (he runs it, I get pretty cards that have the name "Co-Owner" on them.) Then we bought a house. Fuck marriage - co-owning a home is the new commitment. Especially in this day and age where unless you are blessed with an inheritance from generous and forward thinking loved ones, you are more likely to get run over by a rogue horse and carriage in the tourist district than own property.
3. I have a steady job! Well, wait. "Steady" is a flexible term that I like to use to describe a situation in which I get paid, I have benefits (BENEFITS. Suck THAT!), and if they want to fire me they are going to have to catch me doing something nefarious on camera. That said, I am currently being laterally repositioned in my agency, so steady does not equal stable or relaxed. That said, I work with kids who I have a lot of respect and love towards. So I am willing to wade through the proverbial gong show for them.
4. My dog is still alive. Well, she's "our" dog now. But she is still upright four-legged and fancy free. <-- I wrote that last statement without commas for creative effect. Just for the record, that was very difficult for me to do.
5. My Auntie is not still alive. I lost her in October 2012 and my heart to this day feels pretty empty in that place where she used to reside. In an ironic twist of fate, I got fired from a part-time job the same day she died because I took a month off to stay in her condo in another city to be with her while she was dying, but returned home to return to said job before she died then missed her passing because I was too busy in my city being fired. That's not the ironic part. In the job interview for that job I was asked to define the hero in my life, and I chose her. Come to think of it, NONE of that meets the definition of irony. I guess I really just wanted to say two unrelated things - it's pretty fucking shitty that I got fired under the circumstances, and more importantly, she WAS my hero. Still is, really.
6. I'm 34, I'm sitting in my 3/4 renovated house in my totally finished office/library/spare bedroom, I have love, shelter, nourishment... Things are kinda pointing in the direction of progress! Which brings me to my update and raison de blog. <----- bastardization of the French language. You are welcome.
So why are we here? Well, some things never change. I still smoke, I still live with mental health challenges, and I still wear pyjamas. In fact, I recently purchased a fetching onesie with the word "GEEK" across the chest. But I have gone off all my meds.
Hear that? I am UNMEDICATED, people. Gather your children and small animals and seek shelter. Shit just got very real.
Okay, okay. That sounds a wee bit dramatic. But I have to say: I didn't know what to expect, but I did not expect this. For lack of a better word, I am feeling full-out cray-cray and not in a good way. To be fair, I am not living in a depressive episode. I am not having thoughts of suicide, and I am not self-harming. But if this is how the "normal" people live, I am having a pretty massive wake up call.
I'll write something I have generally steered away from. I am going to tell you what kinda pharmaceuticals we were dealing with. A historical interlude if you will. I began medication because I was so anxious I was hospitalized for stomach problems that wound up having no physical trace. I was agoraphobic. The grocery store felt like being stuck in an elevator for hours with 19 people and the bogeyman. Not safe. Medication helped me emerge from that, recover, maintain a job, find my wonderful man and maintain a relationship... you get it. Two months ago I was taking 35 mgs of Cipralex, and Ativan as needed. My version of "as needed" was every morning. Um, how else was I supposed to survive my work day?? <-- Sarcasm. Seriously, the concept of facing a day in public is panic-inducing enough for me to reach for a tranquilizer. Or was. Or is. Or was. But I digress.
Yes, I did this in a responsible manner. I stopped taking Ativan daily, and luckily suffered no withdrawal. It was a teeny dose. Then over two months I decreased my Cipralex, in a manner in which I would have no immediate side-effects as I would if I had stopped cold turkey. Ativan gone, check. Cipralex gone, check. Good, right?
WROOOOOOONG.
Maybe this is a good place to point out that I went on medication for a good reason. So what the hell was the reason to go off of it?? Well, I have a few. Honestly the main one is this. Just to see if I could. I'm not going to lie, I wanted to be able to say that I do not require SSRI's to manage my anxiety and (episodic) depression. It's kinda like a competition I entered where I'm competing against myself. Now I am starting to learn that in a competition of you versus you, someone wins and someone loses. (I know. That was so fucking deep. Right? I'm brilliant.)
March 1st was my first morning of zero pills, and this is how I feel. I feel.... every single emotion. Emotions up the ass. If I was a dinosaur I would be Emotionsaurus Rex. If emotions were an Olympic sport, I would be tearily clutching my gold medal. But here's the catch. Here is the fucking kicker. All the new and heightened emotions I am feeling are those of the negative variety. I could go into the whoooole debate about "good" emotions versus "bad" emotions and how really, all emotions are in us for a reason and are helpful to us. But I won't get into that debate, I'm just going to simplify for the sake of argument and say that in regards to functioning through a regular day of work, human interaction and partnership, there are some emotions that can be problematic. And those are the ones I am going to refer to as "negative". I will list them, with examples. Are you bored yet?
Point form!
Anger. Here's the deal. I haven't been calm and "Zen" so to speak. I'VE BEEN DRUGGED. I used to pride myself on "not making a big deal of the little stuff." Yeah, easy to do when you're half in the world and half in your own la-la land. A day after I went off my meds I had a hard time removing the garbage bag from the bin then tripped over the cord to the heater. I lost my shit! Full on adult tantrum. Lost my bananas. For the record, this experience gave me so much more insight into the experiences of the people around me who do have bouts of anger. Oh yeah... so THAT'S how that feels again. :-/
Embarrassment. DUDE. I am positive that while medicated I still felt embarrassed from time to time. But I am honestly fascinated by the recent emergence of this feeling. And it has emerged in spades. First of all, I now blush. You know blushing? When you are embarrassed or you are about to say something that is really hard and scary and/or difficult and you start to get warm? I am like a tomato-coloured radiator!!! The other day I was sitting in my Supervisor's office with a colleague and she stopped MID-conversation and asked me if I was having an allergic reaction. No lie. I was beet red from cleavage up. I stripped off my sweater and she dug in the recycling bin to give me paper so I could FAN myself. Why? Tough conversation. Mayday! I am now stripped of all disguise!!! I feel positively betrayed. Now not only do I have to feel all my feelings in my feelers.... but the whole world gets to know the precise moment it is happening. Fuck that.
Lastly, the big one. Shame. So... I have a lot of opinions about shame. Up until yesterday, I still maintained that ALL feelings and emotions are helpful and serve a purpose in us on a basic evolutionary level. A survival level if you will. Except shame. I had never found the purpose of shame and deemed it a creation not of evolution, but of society. One to keep us in our "place". But after careful thought after a long day and lots of feelings of shame, I wonder. Society didn't invent shame, Christians didn't invent shame. Shame comes entirely from within, and it is an unhealthy response to a healthy challenge.
No seriously, think about that for a minute. I have. Unhealthy response to healthy challenge.
In my work, my close work partner is a very strong woman with very strong opinions. And she's fucking rad because of it. And up until recently, when she calls me out on anything that could be deemed less than "good practice" I have rolled with it. Taken it in, processed the feedback, and shaken off any personal feelings that would get in the way of good youth work.
Yup, sure do miss those days.
I. Feel. Shame. It is oozing from my pores. If you look at me wrong, I feel shame. Question a professional decision I make? Shame. Hell, you could question my choice of toothpaste. At this point, all I would feel is SHAAAAAAME. It is my go-to response to anything that doesn't involve loving me up and wrapping me in a blanket of puppies. And this is the most significant and difficult to deal with feeling I have had since going off medication. Because it's big time heightened for me now, and I don't feel like I have the skills to deal with it. I didn't need skills, I had pills.
Ooh. I smell a bumper sticker. It's all rhyming and shit!
Okay, I feel as though I need to wrap this up, despite the many things I feel as though I could write about. Another day, yeah?
SUMMARY:
I told my husband, through tears, that medication saved my life. Not because I was going to die or kill myself without it, but because I HAD no life for a long time, because of the anxiety and depression. For the first time since I started experiencing anxiety as a young child, I felt relief and freedom. And I took it, and ran with it. And thrived. And yes, I did tell him that I am as defensive of medications for mental health as I am defensive of my best friends. They both helped me survive.
Now, maybe I don't need it. Maybe I am in a different situation than I was before. Maybe in the whole nature versus nurture debate, my nurture is healthy enough NOW to overcome the nature... the physical predisposition to mental health challenges. And maybe before it wasn't, and I needed a boost from the meds to nurture my nurture... so to speak.
But really, I'm just six days in. Who knows what the next six could look like. All I know is this. There will be a LOT of crying.
Thanks for reading.
xoxo-PS
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