Monday, October 26, 2009

Again... Again & Again & Again

Sluggish. That is the definition I would use. Like walking under water, or through mud, or like swimming fully clothed.

I am tapering off the anti-depressant. I will start the new one soon. I feel as if my body is someone else's. I wake in the mornings and am disappointed that He didn't take me during the night. I am not ungrateful for His mercy; I'm just so very tired of fighting this.

Not sure if it is the tapering of the Cymbalta or just the fact it is no longer working, but my body has never felt this bad. My brain has something going on that I can only describe as electrical "zaps". The nausea, the dizziness, the panicky feeling.

He did give me Klonipin to tide me over until the tapering is done - it doesn't soothe the anxiety - it only makes me feel "out-of-control" and extremely sleepy.

He increased the Lamictal - to "keep me between the ditches" was how he described it.

You know I don't even remember who I was when I was "normal".

Friday, October 09, 2009

Black Dog’s Return

He’s back.

The Black Dog of depression has returned with a vengeance.

Since 1992 I have been treated with anti-depressants. Since 1992, these medications will stop being effective somewhere between 1.5 to 3 years after beginning them. It never, ever gets easier.

This last time they were changed, Lamictal was added and it worked! I no longer had any imagination for writing or much else, but at least I was not awakening every morning only to regret it. It has been 2 years and 3 months. I probably started going down about 4-5 months ago, but like weight gain, when you see it every single day, you don’t notice it until something no longer fits.

Every time it happens, I hit absolute bottom before I realize I am there again. Every time, I tell myself I should have caught that I was going down hill, yet I never do.

I hate being like this. Every single time it happens I go through the same old storyline in my mind; if I were just stronger; if I just had more faith; if I would just pick myself up by my boot straps; all the ifs come washing back over me like a wave.

I pray that one day they will know what causes a brain to not work normally, and find a cure so that no more generations will have to live with the anguish that is my mind.