Medication.

(Since originally writing this blog post, I’ve been on medication for 6 years now, and I’m doing great. I also got diagnosed with combo ADHD, so I finally have the correct meds for that!)

From the middle of 2013 to December 2020, I wasn’t living.

There would be ups and downs, going through the motions, trial and error. I was fine. I had settled into the comfort of being poisoned by my own mind.

My ex-husband’s tagline through all those years was, “Why does something always have to be wrong?”

And I didn’t know.

I was the Midas of depression: everything I touched turned black. It didn’t matter what successes I had because I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I would endlessly sabotage my own stability.

It took my cat dying, getting a puppy, and being pushed to my mental limits daily (mind you, the bar was stupid low) for me to finally consider medication.

This was something I had shied away from because, long story short, I overdosed on my medication in 2016.

It wasn’t on purpose. I just wanted to be better faster. I mixed too many medications and gave myself serotonin syndrome. If you’ve never felt like your bones were itching from the inside, I don’t recommend it.

After spending a day in the ER getting fluids to flush the medication from my system, my husband was understandably wary of my ability to stay responsible when it came to dosing medication.

And honestly, I was wary of it too.

I thought crying every day was normal.

I’ve now only cried twice since December.

My fuse is the longest it’s ever been. It’s like a noose has been untied. I can live again.

Sometimes it’s shocking not to emit the same level of emotion over daily things I used to find completely overwhelming. I would wake up at an 8/10, anxiety and depression-wise, and my goal in therapy was to try to get myself down to a 5.

That way, I had some wiggle room.

Some room to process my environment, stimuli, emotions, and thoughts without immediately being consumed by them.

If you start the day like a shaken-up soda, it doesn’t take long or much for you to explode.

Eventually, I decided to schedule a medication check with my PCP.

It was as easy as scheduling a haircut.

My PCP is, luckily, a really sweet lady who encouraged me to advocate for myself when it came to getting treatment. I literally never knew that if you aren’t seeing improvement on your medication, it might simply not be the right medication for you.

She asked me what I wanted to try.

I wanted something new, but familiar.

So I went on Lexapro, the sister drug of Celexa, which I had taken in the past. We coupled that with Wellbutrin XL, which I started partway through taking the Lexapro, and Buspar for when I needed more immediate anxiety relief.

The only side effect I initially had from Lexapro was insomnia. I would wake up around 1 in the morning feeling completely rested, which was…not ideal.

The Wellbutrin was a different story.

The normal-release version made me feel like I was going to pass away once I reached the maximum dosage. I felt like someone had injected meth directly into my heart and brain. I would be going so fast that everything around me seemed to stand still.

So that was definitely dangerous for driving to work. LOL.

Eventually, I switched to the extended-release version to make the effect less intense up front.

And between 1 and 2 p.m. every day, I would sometimes dissociate a little. Everything would feel fake or out-of-body, like my brain had temporarily stepped three feet to the left of reality. It didn’t last long, but it was weird as hell.

I also took full advantage of the “Popeye with spinach” energy I had while adjusting to my new dose and managed to accomplish things I had put off for years.

And honestly?

I wouldn’t consider any of those side effects particularly bad compared to what I had been living with.

I used to have racing suicidal thoughts.

My chest used to feel like it was on the verge of collapse from carrying a weight so heavy and burdensome that it felt like dark matter.

I felt isolated in my hopelessness because I knew that no living person could lift that weight from me.

Words can only do so much to describe how gritty and relentless depression is.

I had daily stress headaches.

I used to self-harm to try to reconcile how I felt on the inside with what I looked like on the outside.

When I put down the blade for good, self-harm just changed forms.

It became overeating.

Overspending.

Sabotaging relationships.

Self-pity.

Lack of hygiene.

I didn’t think I deserved to be clean.

Literally.

I carried that level of pain every day for seven years.

And then I started medication.

I felt my stomach unknot.

My heart lightens.

My eyes dry.

And I swear I could feel the grace of God wrap around me and promise that I didn’t ever have to go back to that place.

Depression was my abuser.

And I escaped.

It is such a relief to look at my life now and see all the beauty in it.

Juno dying pushed me to become a better mom to my dog, and the only way that was possible was if I was well enough to be one.

If I had known I could feel this much better, I would have done it sooner.

Honestly, I was terrified of starting medication.

I thought I would lose my spark.

But again, my PCP told me something that stuck with me: the right medication shouldn’t change who I am as a person.

I remembered feeling like a zombie in high school because of the wrong medications, and I was angry that no one had advocated for me then.

I’m devastated that so many people are put off from treating their mental health because a doctor did them dirty, or because society taught them they should be ashamed of needing medication.

If your doctor makes you feel disregarded, find a new doctor.

You deserve to be heard.

Now that I’ve been well since December, I’ve started noticing things about my environment that I never saw before.

Misery loves company.

And I have a hard time casually saying “same” when somebody jokes about wanting to kill themselves.

It’s not a “mood,” as the kids call it.

You shouldn’t be living your day-to-day life so comfortably with the fact that you’re miserable.

You shouldn’t have to normalize your own suffering.

And it breaks my heart when I see people poisoning their own wells without realizing they’re drinking from them.

The difficult part for me now is that I’ve become extremely action-oriented.

When I see someone struggling, my brain immediately goes to solutions.

Have you found a therapist?

Have you talked to your doctor?

Have you tried medication?

What can we change?

What can we do?

I’ve tried to help friends find therapists. I’ve tried to help friends find PCPs. I’ve tried to help people get back into treatment.

But there is a line I’ve had to learn to respect:

I cannot want someone’s recovery more than they do.

Getting better is fucking hard.

But it is so worth it.

And to my friends who I’ve been quieter around lately: I still love you.

I always will.

But sometimes getting better requires changing what you allow around you.

Sometimes that means changing your environment.

Sometimes it means stepping away from people you love.

Sometimes it means admitting that certain relationships, habits, or patterns are keeping you exactly where you’ve been trying to escape from.

An addict doesn’t recover by continuing to surround themselves with the exact circumstances that keep feeding their addiction.

And I think the same can be true of mental illness.

That doesn’t mean I think depressed people are lazy.

It doesn’t mean I think people who are struggling aren’t trying.

And it certainly doesn’t mean I think you can just positive-think your way out of depression.

I know better.

I lived it.

What I mean is that healing eventually requires participation.

You can have the best therapist in the world.

You can have medication that finally works.

You can have people who love you desperately.

But eventually, you have to decide that you want to live differently.

That is the painful part.

It is painful to be around someone who is constantly putting themselves down.

Someone who has no interests or motivation.

Someone who continues making unhealthy choices because those choices are the only coping mechanisms they know.

My heart will always be open to anyone who needs an ear.

But I have learned that listening to someone’s pain and taking responsibility for their healing are two completely different things.

Your healing is your responsibility.

Your recovery is your responsibility.

Your betterness is your responsibility.

That doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.

It means you have to participate.

You have to advocate for yourself.

You have to try something different when what you’re doing isn’t working.

You have to be willing to admit that sometimes the life you’ve built around your pain has to change if you want the pain to change.

I spent seven years thinking this was just who I was.

I thought crying every day was normal.

I thought waking up miserable was normal.

I thought wanting to die was normal.

I thought sabotaging anything good that happened to me was inevitable.

I thought I was just going to be like that forever.

I wasn’t.

I was sick.

And then I got help.

I got better.

And now I get to live in the aftermath of discovering that there was an entire life waiting for me on the other side of surviving.

If you’re still in it, I know how impossible that sounds.

I know.

But please believe me when I say this:

There is more life than the life you are living right now.

And sometimes the first step toward finding it is admitting that what you’re currently doing isn’t working.