(Un)Comfortably Numb

I have figured out how to describe the antidepressant experience. It’s like being on emotional morphine.

I’ve heard it said that being on morphine for pain doesn’t so much remove the pain as push it away. The pain is still there, but it is as if someone else is experiencing it. That’s how I’m feeling emotionally. It’s as if all of my emotions are pushed away, and I have to reach to feel them, pushing through a layer of gauze in the process. I can reach them, but there’s some resistance to get to them and if I don’t concentrate, they slip away. That’s disconcerting.

Even more troubling is the loss of passion. True, the passion had a tendency to express itself as rage (either outward as anger or inward as sadness), and that was a situation that could not continue, but I’m not sure I can cope with this numb feeling that has replaced it. I can’t really bring myself to feel deeply about anything right now, and that’s not a comfortable place to be.

What is worse is that the sadness that caused me to seek help in the first place hasn’t really gone away. I was hoping that by going on this stuff, I would find that the negative emotions were all based on what was going on in my head. I’m coming to the realization that there are outward factors in my life that I find unacceptable. Now, the question is: Do I take action and do things that I find frightening to deal with them, or do I just learn to get over myself and accept that what is going on is just the way things are and I can accept them and be happy or not accept them and be miserable.

Oh! How very Hamlet like of me. “To take arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…” I have no answers and am not really sure where to go to look for guidance.

Baby, Please Don't Go (Down to New Orleans)

Mags and I went to see Webb Wilder at the Coffee Pot last night. For a while it like we were dating again, dancing to the music, holding each other close, and kissing at the drop of a hat: anybody’s hat. Then we got home and it was back to being the old married couple again. She was into the flannel “don’t touch me” nightgown so fast it made my head spin. I’m starting to develop a real resentment towards that nightgown. Sigh.

Now today, Mags has left on a five-day business trip. As I write this, she’s been gone for a grand total of eight hours, and I’m already missing her terribly. The house seems so empty without her here. I keep expecting to hear the garage door open, then I realize that it’s not going to. This is the closest I’ve been to being depressed since I started on the Celexa. Part of me wants to put the new Allanis Moirrisette CD on the stereo (So-Called Infatuation Junkie), but part of me realizes that it would be better to pop in Wish You Were Here and deal with the known factor of Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

I’m going to go try to sleep. I’ll write more later.

Flowers for Algernon

The celexa experiment continues. The side effects continue to be a bother, while the positive effects are becoming less noticeable. I think a large part of that may be that I am totally exhausted, but still can’t manage to sleep. To add to that, in the words of the bard, “It lends to the desire, but taketh away from the performance.” Aonghus is one extremely frustrated boy right now.

I’ve often thought that being intelligent was a curse, and now I’m starting to wonder if clear thinking isn’t just as much of one. Have you ever sat in a dirty room with only a small light shining, and felt the warm, even glow of peace and serenity? Then, the next morning, walked into the same room and been appalled at the cobwebs and dirty walls that the sunlight reveals? That’s almost how I feel. Nibs recently opined to Mags and me that she would never get lasic surgery because then she couldn’t take off her glasses when “I don’t want to see something.” I think I know how she feels. The slight fog that I’ve lived in for the past couple of years has been comforting. It was easier to forget things that I didn’t want to remember. The problem was that I was getting harder to remember things that I wanted to, so something had to change.

I’m reminded, rather uncomfortably, of the classic science fiction story, “Flowers for Algernon.” What if all the good effects I’m feeling are only temporary, and at the end of it all I’m left worse off than I was, but with the fresh memory of the good effects?

please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard...