Drugs

May 3, 2007

Comfortable sitting here I don’t know what else I could want more right now. Just a little peace. Softness for my body. I could care less about anything, just to remain here forever and never move. I like being at peace. But I know it won’t last forever. And it terrifies me that I will have to get up soon and live my life. Make the decisions that I’ve been putting off. Be the part of myself that I know exists somewhere but I really don’t know where. Be that person everyone thinks I am. But that person that scares me to death. But some days inspires me. That person who I am sometimes afraid is me, sometimes, I wish was me, somehow know is me, sometimes wish could be forever. But it shifts each and every moment. She does. She’s there and not. When she’s on caffeine. When she suddenly is so shaky that the world is spinning out of control, the very ground like an earthquake. She doesn’t even know who she is. Because she wants to be this person who she sometimes glimpses but she is afraid that is not ever really her.

And today is one of those days. One of those unfeeling days. Yesterday I was on air. Accomplished so much. Had a lot of the drug. Caffeine and no matter what the world thinks I know I couldn’t accomplish what I do without it. I know that’s not good but I do it anyway. I was so proud of myself yesterday. It was so different from the day before that, Tuesday, when I wanted to kill myself. Not wanted to…maybe, but really fantasized about it. How easily I could. It feels so good knowing I have the power. Not so good that I can’t tell a single soul about it. If anyone read this, how freaked out they would be. Especially not my family or friends that have known what I’ve lived through already. How can you go back, they would think? Do you think it’s what I want to do? Well sometimes yeah. It’s so much easier to go where I am comfortable. where I don’t have to live in terror of living my life. But rather I can just put one foot in front of the other and survive. Do the simplest things in life. People really care about you when you are suffering. But when you are flourishing, they smile and sigh and think, Well that’s how it should be. She’s doing fine, so I don’t really need to help her out. I can focus on my own life now. Yes!

So two days ago, I contemplated suicide, yesterday I couldn’t be happier. Today, I am in a zone. A place where I want no one to come inside. No one can pierce my place or I might panic. I wish I could keep writing and writing and never stop. That’s how I feel today. Everything inside me has been curdling and wanted to spew but has never got the chance. And people have it ruined it for me. My opportunities to spew. I can’t stop now. I sometimes wish someone could hear me.

I realized that I have survived without counseling now for six months. I am this post college person who never thought I would ever say that. I lived through college. Maybe the hardest days of my life. That’s why I don’t want to look ahead because I am terrified that harder days will come, and my insides turn into pulp when I think about it.

I have to make some coffee. I am too relaxed and don’t feel like me. I feel more like myself when I am happy and my thoughts are running wild but in a good way. I am so much more inspired, motivated. I am so impulsive it kind of scares me a little bit. And I shake a lot. It’s hard to write and put on make-up. Sometimes I think I am going to have a panic attack. But it’s worth it for the things I can accomplish. It makes me want to live again. Besides that, I really like coffee, not just the caffeine. Coffee is my lifeline sometimes, and I know I put it up there next to God. While God can never let me down, I always turn it the other way. I always think God’s the one who’s letting me down. When I get sick with stomach aches or diarrhea or anxiety attacks, I think it’s all part of what I need to endure to be that person I really am. I really can’t see how I can survive without my caffeine. I never look to Him to help me through the day. Only my coffee.

So there’s that drug. And then there’s my other drug that people might say masks who I really am. Cymbalta. The miracle drug that finally worked. After Celexa and Effexor and Prozac and Lexapro and Neurontin and Topamax…I really thought nothing would work and I was doomed to die. Depression would eat its way at me until I literally died. But it’s so interesting to think how much better I am now. I could owe it all to this med or to God who provided it, but instead I wonder, Should I even be on this med? How do I really know that this in particular is what is really helping me. I don’t but I just keep taking it, that green and blue pill, the little rattle-like thing with the little powdery balls inside that I hear and feel flowing down my esophagus every morning. I try to take it every day between 9 and 10. I imagine how that little thing, those little balls—what they do inside of me. How they come out and go into my blood stream and hook up to some neurons which tell my brain to increase the good chemicals so that I can be happy or at the very least not get down in the dumps so easily for extended periods of time. Of course there’s times when those pills have things working against them. Like hormones. And for some reason the hormones usually win. But at least I know I am not alone. But what about on Tuesday, when for no reason, I began having those thoughts? How come my pill didn’t work that day? How could I talk myself into such a deep dark cavern? How can I trust that this med really works when I have days like that? I guess I just believe that I will never know what happens and since I have more better days than scary dark ones, then that means the little balls are working their hardest most of the time. Keeping my chemicals evened out at least as well as is possible—when it comes to what little dissolving white balls can do.

So I just take my Cymbalta 60 mg every day and hope that today is the day I figure out if I am really me when I take that pill or some version of myself or not even me at all. Or even if I really care. As long as I feel good why does it matter anyway? Because it’s scary to think I am living as someone I am not supposed to be. Even if it does mean I am happier and think more positively and can accomplish more and want to live to see my 30^th birthday.