My mind is maddening, that is becoming frayed, but also irritating to me. Perhaps my temperament is wearing thin after a half century of bitter cognition? Might this world just mow down the canaries amongst us earlier than the Canada Geese? I’m talking about my sensitive flock of people with depression and anxiety.
I could be going to an art show, a concert, to one of any number of brilliant Oscar nominated films on a brilliantly cold Friday evening in Anchorage. Instead I’m trying to wrap my axons around the unknowable – am I taking medications as a personality lift rather than spend the years it may take to become able to deal with my emotions? Am I the equivalent of a psychiatrically enhanced Dolly Parton or Joan Rivers?
I spend many weekend nights alone trying to think of funny things to write because I want more out of life than disillusionment. Perhaps that is my God given role, to irritate others with petty concerns and narcissistic rage. Some comedians thrive on this kind of energy while others die from it. When I take medications I am not a different person, it’s just that I feel like I’m cheating. Everyone else is so proud of doing things naturally these days, giving birth in bloody bath water, using old lemons to clean their toliet, eating vegetables grown in certified feces. Don’t get me started on meditation and yoga for mental health. Those people are not nicer or healthier than anyone else they are just more evangelical, some might say obsessed. Besides I’m not going to meet my soul mate in yoga class unless he is in the back of the room laughing and not in a Buddha kind of a way. My soul mate may be searching for my nervous tics and downcast mouth only to find a medically or yogically contented smile disguising my true nature.
One might call this internalized stigma. I should lower my expectations of who I thought I was and accept that I have changed for the worse because that would be what John Wayne or Ronald Reagan would do. Mother Teresa on the other hand might take anti-depressants because she could work through the pain with more ease and help more people. That’s called a crutch by some people. A crutch is what we allow people to use when they have a physical injury not a psychological one. I just want to tell off the same people that everyone else wants to tell off and a few more that you may think harmless for good measure. Maybe I’ve reached the stagnation vs generation stage and medication gives me an unfair advantage in generating hope at my age just like an athlete on steroids gets on that last big hill in The Tour De France.
Anyway, my medications are somewhere in the mail and I’m not sure I’ll take them when they come as I’ve already been off them for about a week and want to see just how bad I can get. I don’t feel more anxious without them, more judgmental, more impatient, but aren’t those just bad habits? I need to see how nasty I can be before I become nice lady antidepressant lady again. Maybe no one will even notice.
polarflares 