Lie Still, Little Bottle
(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 15.678% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)
I feel good these days. My moods are more balanced, my relationships are flowing well, I’m mostly productive.
I feel so good, in fact, that I’m tempted to stop taking my Paxil. I don’t need it now, right? I’m fixed! Except I know what will happen.
This is weird. This understanding that all of my competence and strength these days comes from a tiny white pill. Oh, I could kind of function without it, if I wanted to fight off more insecure tremors, if I wanted to exhaust myself in battling lack of focus, if I wanted to fight all day.
As it is, this feels so natural that it’s hard to believe that it’s not. And there’s that strange tug: should I be this beholden to medication?
Yes. Yes, you should. For now, anyway.
The way I see it, you and I are beholden to our little white pills the way type I diabetics are beholden to insulin, or the folks with hypothyroidism are beholden to their medication. It doesn’t make us less, it just makes us us. No one would question the latter two’s taking advantage of modern pharmacology; why should we question our own?
I realized many years ago that one little pill was going to be with me for the rest of my life – and it actually was a freeing moment for me. Until then, I didn’t know to what black pits of self-hate I would spiral – usually with ONLY enough notice to make it worse, or when the next crippling anxiety attack would convince me that THIS time, it really is a heart attack or time to give up and take my life (for me, the anxiety would trigger depressive fits – and vice versa. Can we say Catch-22?). Once I realized that simply taking that little pill helped me react to things like “normal” people do, I felt so liberated! I was NORMAL!! I WASN’T crazy!! Pills don’t work on “crazy”, they work on bad wiring or a screwed up chemistry set in the brain.. I could live with knowing that when Goddess made me, she shook the beaker just a BIT too hard and something got screwed up. I don’t look back at all the mistakes I made and blame just bad brain chemistry. I learned a LOT of bad habits and it has taken me years to undo as much as I have, but I know the journey isn’t over. But, with the help of that little pill – I CAN keep doing the work. I can start to like myself – and learn who I am in reality, not just my self-loathing talking.
Then came the day that I almost died and the subsequent lingering illness. Now, my one little pill is joined by about 24 others – every single day for the rest of my life. Sometimes it can be a LOT higher than that, some weeks – I’m a “bad girl” and only take about 10 of them over the course of the day, but I start to feel the difference and jump back on my cocktail ASAP. But, even when I am skipping everything else, that little Zoloft pill is my friend. It makes me smile to see my friend every morning, knowing that it’s purpose in this universe is to help me be the person I always wanted to be – someone who can have a rational conversation after getting my feelings hurt, someone who can look in the mirror without the burning desire to break it and use the glass to harm myself, someone who KNOWS that my SO’s love me and isn’t afraid to love them in return. Those are little victories – but they are some of the same ones you get to have every day. So look at that pretty white pill and thank it for it’s presence in your life – it’s doing a good job!