Cotton Mouth

On Friday morning I started taking anti-depressants again.  It shuttled down my gullet and dissolved into me without resistance.  There was the nausea, a little cotton mouth and some dizziness.  I am tinkering around a little with the time I take it because it makes me more tired than usual - probably because my system is too amped up to sleep properly.  My eyes are dark like a raccoons and I almost fell asleep in French class today.

But I am not complaining, not really, because after just four days of medication I can honestly say that I feel normal again.  No, not in my body, but in my head where it really counts.  I felt a difference on Friday and it has continued through.  I find that I have the same thoughts I used to but they no longer cripple me in a wilted heap of tears.  Now they are just thoughts.  I am capable to look at them, rest on them for a moment and let them pass.

How is this possible? It's a little scary to me.  I realized how little I understand about how human bodies work, how delicate and malleable we are.  While I understand the basic chemistry of depression, I still marvel that a little pill can readjust you, can change your personality.  It's science fiction, and the potential to misuse such a technology is there but you have to really like conspiracy theories to linger on that thought too long.  

There are the scary health issues too, which is why I waited to long to take this move in the first place.  I don't want to be medicated forever, I worry about my liver, but if the other choice is to live in the dark prison my brain can create I will gladly choose the former.

I have to admit that after being sad for so long I felt guilty for my balance.  

"I shouldn't feel so good, so quickly." I thought, "People will think I've been faking it all along."

I quickly dismissed this thought, though, because those who might think I was faking are those who will never understand depression in the first place and it's not worth the energy to try.  Unless you've lived it, unless you've known someone close to you who has been there, it's very difficult to grasp.  So I leave it alone.  I just take my pill and join the rest of the world in the simple pleasures that I can once again enjoy.

I went to a party Saturday and danced until 4 a.m..  It snowed and I laughed with my whole body.  I went to my French class this morning and was glad to be there (even though I am frustrated with my progress).  I went Christmas shopping with Sarah and bought chic little accessories for my nieces.  I fell asleep on the train home and arrived back in Meudon tired, but without the familiar feeling of dread to be going back to my apartment.

I have done this before, I know that the effects level out and that I will still have to work hard in therapy to understand the patterns I need to break, and in life creating healthy habits that can support me even in my worst times without medication, but I have the safety net now.  And I am strapped into the harness.  The feeling is like practically drowning and then having someone pull you up for air.  Is that mixing my metaphors too much?  Well I don't care.  It's all of those things and a whole slew of others.

Now we can get back to the real stuff worth talking about, like living.