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.