For the Record

I need to put this here in case I forget. I do not want to repeat this experience, yet I’m almost certain that even with the recorded proof I will have written here, I’ll probably do it again.

I went off my meds. Red alert, code blue, get me a crash cart and 10cc’s of ‘duh.’ I knew better, but I went off them anyway; all of them.

The vitamins were the first casualties of the malevolent partnership between my faulty memory and my sneaky subconscious. I know they’re good for me blah, blah, blah, but I hate taking pills every day. Most days I just can’t be bothered to stand there over the sink, gagging on a handful of gritty, yeasty, musty-smelling, gelatin-coated bullets of dubious effectiveness, feeling them melt and stick in my throat, fighting the urge to puke them all into the garbage disposal. Even the green tea extract I’m supposed to take 3-4 times a day if I want any chance at all of eradicating a particularly stubborn long-term resident virus was no match for my forgetfulness. It only took a few days for me to give up completely.

Next went the birth control, which I now take strictly for its pathetic hormone-regulating benefits and serendipitous side effect of a nice, clear complexion. After my period, I couldn’t find the next pack and spent the next week bickering with my OB/GYN about whether I had to wait for a re-Pap to get a re-fill. By the time they came in, my days were off and I had to wait for the next cycle, but then when the next window of opportunity came around I didn’t notice until it was two days too late. It’s like the Haley’s freakin’ comet of reproductive defense, and I keep sleeping through the show.

The last casualties were the ‘real’ meds, the stuff that actually matters. I was sleeping on the couch, enjoying the laziness of being able to drift off whenever, wherever, with no fear of downstairs neighbors jarring me awake with their loud music, loud arguments and loud dogs. The pills were in the bedroom, so I tried moving them to the kitchen where I’d be reminded to take them every time I approached the sink. Pretty soon they blended into the visual landscape of clutter in that corner of the bar and my sporadic attempts to maintain the prescribed regimen simply drifted away, absorbed by my manic schedule and cheerful suspicion that maybe I was better now anyway.

I remember the psychiatrist telling me that stopping the drugs would lead to possibly severe emotional problems, especially an abrupt cessation, but I figured I’d sort of titrated off them by only remembering to take them every other day or every two days at the end there. I kept an inner eye on my emotional well-being and even told one or two people as a safety net in case my grip on reality should be shaken loose enough that I needed some help hanging on. I had the sense to figure that someone other than me should be watching me.

For a few months I felt mostly fine. The mood swings were no worse than before I started, but overall I carried on with life as usual and noticed no other changes. For a few months.

Then I started noticing things; my temper was short, and by ‘short’ I mean my fuse set up shop next door to the flame and basked in its glow, leaning over at the slightest provocation or catching the tiniest breeze, addicted to the ‘whoosh’ of ignition. I was getting exhausted by the sheer effort of being angry and annoyed all the time. Sometimes it’s fun to be the snarky, sarcastic, irritable girl with the cutting wit, policing standard ego sizes in her circle of influence with a barb here, a left-handed compliment there. She serves a purpose, and her anger serves her. This was different. There was no point. I was just mad all the time. One night I thought I might actually hurt my dog when she reacted to this unstable creature shouting at her by barking and dodging my attempts to catch and kennel her like any wary animal might. I cried as I sat watching her watching me from the door of her open cage. I replayed all the horrible things I’d said and done and thought of doing and compared them to the kind of life I thought she deserved. I cried harder and said I was sorry as she busily cleared my cheeks of every tear that dropped. Flag one, red and bold and un-ignorable.

Then I noticed other things. I stopped wanting to be around people. I tried to reason that it was because I was surround my incompetency and mediocrity and laziness all day that I just wanted to come home and be alone. But four days straight of not leaving the apartment is not a break, it’s a breakdown. I noted this second red flag.

I was bored. Nothing was interesting. I could take or leave television, books, games, phone calls, text marathons, walking the dog, going out with friends, taking pictures, creating art or stories, and even cooking, singing and movies, my three sure-fire therapeutic cures. I just sat, sometimes for hours, often in the dark. I reasoned I was conserving energy, but it was more for me than TECo or the earth. I just didn’t want to see all the things I should want to do but didn’t. Red flag three was a little harder to see in the dark.

Red flag four was harder to spot since I was suddenly neck deep in an awful medical drama I’d avoided watching for years. Lifetime was running a three-a-day marathon of Grey’s Anatomy all week long with ‘catchup’ episodes on the weekend, and I never missed a single one. I watched with complete absorption, manic empathy and a steadily shrinking stack of Kleenex. When that red flag went up I brushed it aside to get a better look at George accidentally dragging a delighted 8-year-old boy into the wrong OR to view a messy craniotomy. I reset the DVR, sniffled, and rubbed the red flag out of my eye with a balled-up tissue.

But I did the rational thing. Well, semi rational. I think fully rational would have been putting in a phone call each to my psychiatrist and my therapist, both of whom suffered my cowardly absentee breakup many months ago. But I couldn’t face their disapproval and “I told you so’s” so I went back to the beginning and started my meds like it was the first time. Day one: one blue ortho tri-cyclen tablet, one bupropion HCL, one of three prescribed lamotrigine, and later in the day when I began to feel the effects of my psychotropic saviors thundering to my rescue against the advancing hordes of dark feelings and icky thoughts, I swallowed an Atavan to keep me from noticing too much the uncomfortable carnage roiling inside.

I thought the hard part was deciding to back on the meds, being forced to admit that yes, I’m still sick and no, I’m not strong enough to live my life without pills to protect me from myself. Turns out that was just the rickety, moldy, ruined bridge to The Hard Part which lay in wait for me just around the corner.

I walked into it last weekend and was horrifying ambushed by crushing sadness, the prickly heat of anxiety and underneath it all, a low, dark, sticky feeling of ambiguous dread dragging at my feet. The Hard Part, it seems, is the long battle of the medical miracles to subdue the rag-tag bunch of subconscious castaways firmly entrenched in my psyche. They’ve been there a long time, and they’ve had a lot of support from me over the years, so I imagine rooting them out will be a long, painful process that will leave me feeling better than bad but not as good as great until the med

s have had a chance to finish the overthrow and settle into their day jobs, all the daily, humdrum minutiae involved in keeping me from going off the deep end. I just have to let them work.

If I can hold on until the battle is over, it won’t be much longer until I can once again find myself surrounded by the gray and featureless wall of calm that will stand between me and the me I can’t afford to be.