I’ve been trying for more than a decade to be happy.
Ever since my second child was born, I’ve been taking various cocktails of medication, trying to get to a point where my days are eights and nines instead of fives and fours. I have depression and anxiety. Don’t know if it’s severe, but it feels like I can’t get it better.
It wasn’t because of my second child that I started meds. It was because my job stability was suffering. I had had three jobs since graduating from college. One I was laid off from. One I was fired. One was a three-month contract that didn’t hire me back because of a hiring freeze. And job number four was shaping up to be the same story.
First I was moved to a different team (half because they needed more manpower, half because I wasn’t getting on with anyone). Then I got disciplinary action for being insubordinate. I thought sticking to my conviction about following policies and good coding practices was the right thing to do. But I guess I wasn’t diplomatic about it.
But this isn’t about my work history. This is about trying to stabilize myself and stop getting in trouble for poor attitude, being a creep, and thumbing my nose at authority. I wasn’t a bed of roses at home either. When you have a kid, you got to make a change. And I knew that change wasn’t going to come within. I’d tried, and I wasn’t strong enough.
Looking at my work history, I’m not sure that the medication succeeded in keeping my career stable. Maybe I just have a short attention span. Or something in my brain says that, after two years, rejection is coming, so I try and sabotage it to have the power in that situation. Or maybe my work-ethic is too influenced by my environment (good environment = I’m a good worker, bad environment = don’t expect much from me — my work reflects the support I get).
Nonetheless, I’m still not where I want to be emotionally. The medication’s succeeded in muting the lows, but it’s also killing the highs. I can’t laugh anymore, I can’t smile. Nothing makes me happy. Nothing’s funny. I went to “Guys and Dolls” last year and everyone was laughing uproariously at everything… except me. Not that it wasn’t funny, but nothing hit my brain with enough energy to laugh. Things in the past that evoked a response in the past (see “Five Songs that Made Me Cry”) or nostalgic movies or memories have an effect anymore. Nothing gives me joy or delight.
What I find myself doing these days is “escape” or “distraction”. Finding some way not to face reality, either by listening to podcasts, writing my novel, watching movies, or playing video games. Granted, this is probably what most people have been doing during Covid year, but that doesn’t mean I should accept it.
Really the medication’s benumbed everything. I’ve been keeping track of my mood via Daylio. According to my statistics, since January, my average mood has been 5. Which, I guess, is the definition of average. But it’s not because the highs and lows cancel each other out, it’s because I don’t go anywhere. In the past ninety-four days, it’s broken down like this:
| Mood | Number of Days |
| 8 | 4 |
| 7 | 23 |
| 6 | 27 |
| 5 | 24 |
| 4 | 13 |
| 3 | 2 |
I want to have more eight days and fewer four days. Or at least have some dynamics.
Nowadays, the only emotion I ever feel is anger. Resentment. Cynicism. Enmity. Irritation. And it shows through in posts like angry at the billboard outside my neighborhood, angry at the election, angry at the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie, angry at the Field of Dreams movie, angry at rich people, angry at The Masked Singer.
That’s why I call it a Gordian Knot–all of my options that loosen one thread tighten another. I could keep tweaking the cocktail of pills that I’m taking–stronger stuff, more of it, and so on. I’ve taken Pristique, Lexapro, Paxil, Trivium, Zoloft, and all their generics. I’ve paid $400 out-of-pocket for genetic testing to see which medications I can metabolize and which I can’t.
I’m on 75 mg of venlafaxine and 1200 mg of lithium right now. And while my psychiatrist says that’s not an unusually large amount, it’s still lithium. Kurt Cobain named a whole album after it, then killed himself. Evanescence wrote a song about it. The 90’s alternative station on SiriusXM is named lithium. RadioLab just ran a story about a girl with bipolar who went nuts because she wasn’t taking her lithium.
But I don’t have bipolar, I have social anxiety and depression. Am I even taking the right medication? How long before until I find that pot of gold with the right combination? Is there one? Isn’t there a point where you stop trying these infinite combinations of infinite prescriptions before you have to consider something more drastic?
Which I’m willing to do. I turn forty this year–I don’t want to do this dance the rest of my life: seeing the psych every three months, saying “didn’t work, what’s the next one”. When should I move onto something more dramatic? Taking these pills feels like poking at a wall with a pencil. I need something bigger to break this dam.
Of course, I could just stop taking them altogether, which would be the slicing of the knot, but that sounds dangerous too. I don’t have a guarantee that my problems twelve years ago are better. I don’t want to turn into the same angry young man I used to be.
All I know is a body can decide to do something, decide not to do something, or decide not to decide. And the last option is oft taken by fools.
