disclaimer: this blog may contain more info about me than you really want to know. (nothing gross, just intensly personal)
i haven't been writing alot lately. i haven't felt very good. mentally, i mean. i've been feeling tired and down, crying at "the drop of a hat pin" (as my dad would say). i've been feeling sick and tired at work, sick and tired of people and their drama, sick and tired of the life i've been living, letting myself become caught up in unimportant, stupid stuff. i've been sick and tired of being sick and tired, but too tired to do anything about it.
i've also stopped taking my anti-depressant. due to the holidays, the way pay-days have been falling, and my own laziness, i have not gone to the pharmacy to pick up a refill. i'd been feeling pretty good, and so i thought maybe i can skip a few days. a few days has turned into a few weeks. i really hate taking the pills, but i really hate who i am with out them. i also hate that i'm so dysfunctional without them.
for anyone who has recently gotten to know me, i apologize in advance for what i'm probably going to be like. if you've recently met me or gotten to know who i am, you've met the "me" who has been on the pills.
now, at least for a little bit, you'll get to know the drug free me. i've always struggled with the decision to take them or not. it all started after calah was born. (actually, the anxiety and the obsessive thoughts started while i was still pregnant, but i didn't recognize it for what it was). it took me about 5 or six months to figure out what was going on. by the time i asked my doctor for some medication, i was a nervous wreck. i was crying all the time, i hated my self, i felt so guilty because i didn't feel the way about my baby that i thought i should. i was having these horrible scary visions of the people i loved dying in horrible fiery crashes. everyday activities like driving and feeding the baby had become these terrible ordeals. i don't remember very much about calah's early days.
when i figured out what was going on, i thought maybe i could fix it my self. i thought i could pull myself up by my boot straps, as it were. i tried being happy, praying more, pleading with God to fix my brain, i felt so guilty about taking medications, i thought no good christian would take medications, i felt like a failure as a mother, a person, a christian. if i just had more faith, prayed more, loved God more, i would get better. but i didn't. i finally got so desperate i got my doctor to prescribe me some medications.
i took them for about 5 or 6 months. then i went off again. i thought maybe it was just a short term thing, now that she was older, i was less sleep deprived, etc, that i would be ok.
i played the on again off again game for a while alternating feeling psycho and hating myself and feeling normal but hating that the pills were responsible for my normalcy.
this june i went on them again, feeling overwhelmed with the whole adoption/infertility thing. i took them faithfully, until about two weeks ago.
now i feel like a basket case. that's good, though, because at first i didn't feel anything. if there's anything worse than feeling crappy, it's having no feeling at all. i understand why people may cut themselves--feeling the pain and seeing the blood reassures you that you are actually alive.
so now what? i don't know. since i made it through the no feeling stage, maybe i can just tough it out. this is,though, a bad time of year for me anyways, with the greyness of winter and the lack of sun making me feel yucky anyways. initally i was going to try to get off the meds after winter, but then i just let the prescription run out and didn't refill it. so now what?
do i try to tough it out? am i choosing the easy way out if i start taking the pills again? am i just choosing depression over joy? if i was a good christian wouldn't God heal me? do i need more faith?
or are the pills God's way of helping me feel better? i feel like a loser either way.
