Six Months Later

So now it's six months later, still a long time ago, and I've got six months on the Prozac Party Boat. My tune has changed. To wit:

Ok, so it's six months later, so sue me. If you don't think that the last six months have been crowded enough to justify losing track of something like this little journal than to hell with you. The important thing to get to now is how I'm doing on the drug. I read the entries before this one and I am truly amazed at the tone and the mood. All I can say now is Thank God for Prozac. I know a lot of people have a lot of side effects and a lot of trouble with this stuff but I am finding it unbelievable. I don't ever recall feeling like the person I am now. If I had this stuff back
when I was in high school I cannot fathom where I might be now relative to where
I am. My shrink, Indira Yoda, is talking about weaning me off it in another six
to nine months. Now that scares me at this point. Almost every aspect
of my life is some way improved since being on Prozac. The notable exception to
that is my sexual life. If the entire sexual experience is a mountain then on
Prozac that mountain is steeper and higher. Sex is a bit more like work now. But
that actually seems to be getting better a little and I can find no other
negative side effects. Let's talk about the changes.

Occupationally: I am at this moment (knock on wood), still employed. I am disliking it less, enjoying my co-workers more, and I am more confident that I can make it through an average day without a catastrophic mistake. I don't feel like I need so desperately to get out. I think that the silly nowhere crush I have on one young lady at work has something to do with that as well. To top it off, my boss told me how much better I am doing since the crisis six months ago. Yee hah!

*Interlude. At the time of this writing I was married. Yes I had a crush
on a co-worker that I knew at the time would never be fulfilled or even
mentioned. You cannot always control what you feel but you can control what you do about what you feel. I chose to ride it out like detox and the person (as far
as I know) still does not know about it (she no longer works there anyway). Not
only would it not have worked out it would have been wrong. The fact that later
my wife and I split up was in no way connected. Our fate had already been
set.*

Intellectually: the whip of my wit cracks ever faster! I didn't realize how dull I was feeling but I feel like the brain's flywheels are all freshly greased. I memorized a poem about seven or eight stanzas long in about twenty minutes. Coming up with more ideas at work. The writing is coming out faster than I can put it down. I don't think I have ever felt this literary outpouring before (ha!). The Saga of Mebh, 130 lines of anglicized skaldic verse, is proof positive of that. Oh what a joy it is to create again, even if my wife pooh-poohs it. To hell with her.

Emotionally: Remember that nasty helpless feeling from the last entry? Well I'm not cured but I'm so much better. Locus of control has always been a problem with me and I am finding that I can be more proactive, take more control over my life and actually believe I can accomplish something. This has greatly bolstered my self-esteem. I'm so used to downward spirals , I'm stunned by what actually appears to be an upward one! I feel energized. Sadness is no longer quicksand. Without going into details, between the troubles with my wife and the subsequent crush I'm dealing with I still have a lot of care, worry, and sadness. But I have some control over it now. I can set it aside, I can slip out of its eager grasp and feel Ok about myself and my surroundings. I no longer feel as if the world or fate or God or whatever is actively against me, wishing me ill. There are no words to describe how that makes me feel inside.

I've always been a nice guy, but I'm even nicer. I feel overwhelmed by a need to be considerate and caring towards the people around me. Maybe it's only because I can love myself a bit more so it makes it easier to love everyone else just a bit more.

Let's talk about those types of feelings for a minute.
When I was young and in love, I was a melodramatic pit of emotional need and raw
hormones. My relationships with my one high-school girlfriend and my one college
girlfriend were both characterized by this phenomenon. The torrid all-consuming
romantic feeling was there, mixed with enough angst and insecurity to float a
battleship. After college, I was over that. I thought that it was partially because of being burned and mostly because of maturity. This state characterized my relationships with my next girlfriend and after that the woman whom I married. More cerebral than the others, less wildly passionate. Part of
that was probably a need to feel safe and also protection against change. The
relationship with the first ended because it had to. Where my relationship with
my wife is going I'm not completely certain. Then there is this hang-up I have
for the co-worker. This will never happen and I have to make sure I keep telling
myself that. The interesting thing about that is when I was younger the knowing would have thrown me into a frenzy of self-indulgent depression, self-pity, and bad poetry. Now, while the realization hurts, the whole paradigm is different. Whatever it is I'm feeling, love, infatuation, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't go
hand in hand with the debilitating need. I can think thoughts of great romantic
content and even write (hopefully not so bad) poetry, feel things I haven't felt
in over a decade, but feel much more mature about it. It's a shame that I've
just got to get over it, but you know what? I'll live.

Big change huh? In most ways the euphoria I was experiencing did not last. I got over my crush. My wife and I split. The Prozac honeymoon ended at some point. Don't really remember when. And I stopped writing the journal.

Back in the Day

My ability to write is, I think, above average. My ability to write every day is, without doubt, suspect. It is getting better though. When I was first diagnosed I started what I believed would be a daily journal of my experiences being a depressed person. Posterity would thank me if I ever let anyone see it. Possibly posthumously. I can be a bit shy. I managed two entries in three days and then nothing for six months. One more entry, and that was it. So much for consistency. The really interesting thing is the contrast between those first two writings and the last one. I reproduce the first ones here:

I took my first Prozac today. Can you tell? Can you see the scarlet letter, the neon 'P' that floats above my head casting light over my whole persona? The label that tells the world, family, friends, employers, women, that I can't cope and need help just to get by? Does it show?
Rank self-pity? Self-indulgent melodrama? Sure it is. If I was not afflicted with depression I wouldn't say things like that. Then again if I wasn't afflicted with depression I wouldn't be on
Prozac.
I feel I've stepped across a line. Like I've stepped off a precipice and I'm free falling, trusting an outside force to slow me down and land me safely. Like I've voluntarily given up walking for a
wheelchair. Like there is no going back. Will I be happier? Will I cope better? Will it help me keep my job?
This is how I've come to Prozac. Through work. Through problems at work. Through being stressed enough and unhappy enough and preoccupied enough that I can't concentrate and focus sufficiently to keep from making repeated mistakes. After the last one I was sure they would fire me. By their own rules and procedures they could have fired me. I was 'only' suspended. For the second time in a month. Nasty knock to one's ego, not to mention one's wallet. So I took refuge in my local EAP, and after one visit the counselor was sufficiently concerned to refer me to a psychiatrist to check for depression. At that point it did not surprise me to be referred. My family has a fairly thick history of depression, including a close
relative who is also on Prozac. So it was with more resignation than anything
else that I found myself seated in the office of a psychiatrist; a Hindu woman
of such diminutive and wizened aspect that I wondered if she were maybe the next
incarnation of Yoda. I sat in the chair lacing and unlacing my fingers, feeling
down and dejected, I think primarily because I had to be there at all.
Mechanically she went through her list of questions, gnarled hands recording her
reactions to my answers. She didn't look at me more than twice I think during
the whole thirty minute process, when she did, her thick glasses enlarged her
eyes in a very unnerving fashion.
The questions for the most part were fairly predictable. I had to briefly go over the fourteen month melodrama following my break-up with my high-school girlfriend, which may have been the first episode of real depression (it was also at least fifty percent self-indulgent performance art). She also asked me if I had suicidal thoughts. Hmmm. I must admit during my teen angst fest I did. I don't believe I would have done anything about them. Now? Whatever my problems and troubles are at this point I can without hesitation say no. One look at my very young son is
enough to banish the possibility. There is very little I want more in this world than to watch my beautiful boy grow up. The thought of saddling my son with the baggage of a suicided father is absolutely insupportable. Even without this compelling argument I think I am past that whole issue.
So the session concluded with what seemed an interminable silence broken only by the scratching of the doctor's pen as she finished up the third page of notes with what I can only guess was a summary. Then, without any preamble whatsoever, she said "You have serious depression, I am going to prescribe Prozac for you." Boom. Just like that. I've joined
the ranks of the Prozac nation. I guess we'll just have to see what that means.
So as I mentioned before I took my first pill. I have been told not to expect much in the way of results for about a month. For now all I have to watch for are side effects. Have I seen any? Well, today I was extremely nervous and anxious, at times almost to the point of non-functionality, with little cause. Nervousness and anxiety are both side effects, but one data point does not a conclusion make. I've been nervous and anxious a lot at work lately with no help from a pill.

That was the first day. Now we skip ahead to day three.

Day three marching in the Prozac parade.
My how smirking and wry this has made me. Day three and I am not yet comfortable
with putting that little capsule in my mouth. The last two days (off work) have been free of that gut-wrenching case of nerves. I think I have had a sort of background tightness in my gut that I don't know whether to attribute to stress or med. I've also felt just faintly nauseous at times this afternoon.
You know, I've wondered the last week and a half whether or not they did me a favor by not firing me. I don't change my life well, I don't like what I'm doing, at least it would have got me out. Now I'm still there and things like appointments with psychiatrists are dividing my attention and slowing my attempts to find something else to do with my life. Helpless. One question Indira Yoda asked me during diagnosis was had I been experiencing feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or (I think) uselessness. Helplessness. That I feel. Wanting to change things
that are wrong with me and my life but not knowing how. Filled with dissatisfaction but also filled with fear and inertia. If there is one thing I'd like to see this Prozac thing get rid of it's that helpless feeling.
I worry for my son.

So there it is. Almost ten years old and straight from the hip. Next post showcases how I felt six months later, then we'll go from there.