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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
You may have noticed that I candidly discuss my health insurance woes here, and some may find it startling that I'm so willing to admit that I've been taking antidepressants for the past twelve years.
The truth is, like Zach Braff's character in Garden State, I can't really remember a time before I was taking an antidepressant of some sort. The reason that I've been on Effexor for 12 years is that it works. A month after starting Effexor at 18, I was able to start taking classes at Columbia University, after having dropped out of high school due to what was officially classified by the State of New York as "emotional disturbance". I'd like to think my turbulent adolescence - the cutting, the sleeplessness, the inability to leave the house, the bouts of rage that caused me to kick holes in the wall, spending half my time locked in the bathroom- was unique, but I know that it is not. It was just turbulent. Adolescence tends to be.
Now I support myself and I've held down a job for more than five years. I live in an apartment that I pay my share of the rent for. These are major achievements, a fact I often forget. A few years ago, I couldn't imagine a future for myself that didn't involve either hospitalization or some sort of adult halfway house for the emotionally crippled. I'm not exaggerating; one of my therapists posed the question to me, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "supervised adult home" was the best I could do.
Most of us can mark our lives in phases marked by major events in our lives - "childhood" may have ended when you went off to college, or your life may have been changed the day you met an important person in your life - your boyfriend, your birth mother, whatever the hell it is that's been significant to you.
I've got a couple of these. My family moved from Brooklyn to Roosevelt Island in 1990, the summer I turned 11. I can neatly divide my life into a "Brooklyn" era and a "Roosevelt Island" era. When I moved out of my parents' place in 2005, the "Jersey" era was born. And so forth.
That second era can also be demarcated another way, because that was the summer I was hospitalized for clinical depression, which manifested itself as a separation anxiety so severe that I couldn't bear to leave my mother - not to go to school, not to allow her to go to work, not at all. I have memories of this time that include locking myself in the bathroom, which only locked with a hook-and-eye, and having my mom desperately thrust a butterknife up through the crack in the door to get it open; of sitting on our backyard swingset in the rain while the neighbors called the cops because of my screaming that I would kill myself if I had to get on that schoolbus. And almost meaning it. Almost.
So. While my family was packing up boxes and getting ready to move to a new borough, I was living in a state of what my memory tells me was perpetually swollen-eyed, hiccupping agony (interrupted by occasional bouts of calm) in the children's psychiatric ward at St Vincent's. They prescribed me my first mood stabilizer there, a little orange pill called nortriptyline. It was the first of many. I was on Prozac, I was on Zoloft, I was on some pill whose name escapes me that gave me a side-effect so comical and strange that I hesitate to mention it here.
It took me a long time to see my depression as a chemical imbalance rather than a personality flaw. One of ny symptoms is a self-esteem so low that it took me quite a long time to stop asking my friends why they would possibly want to be friends with me. Even with Effexor, before coffee most mornings I walk down the street and imagine my footsteps shaking the earth, my jowls trembling, and fellow commuters veering away from me in disgust. Most of the time I feel okay, but once a month, my hormones overtake the effectiveness of the drug and for a few days I cry myself to sleep each night, imagining wrapping the bed-curtains around my neck.
The lows on Effexor are rarely as low as they were before Effexor, though. Without it, I'm certain I'd be dead. With it, I'm a mostly-functioning adult contributing, however meagerly, to society. I pay my bills on time (usually), go out with friends (when they make me) and try to remember to change the kitty litter without being told. I even have fun, sometimes. There was even some dating, for a time. You know, like the "normies" do.
Which I am. I'm as normal as anyone else with a chronic condition - arthritis, migraines. I control it with medication, I live my life the best I can. I'm not ashamed of the condition itself, although I'm occasionally ashamed by my behavior. I'm not always the best friend, sister, daughter, roommate or employee. Sometimes the choices I make are not so great. I own those mistakes, and I don't blame my depression for them - they're all me. But I do thank my Effexor that there aren't more.
The truth is, like Zach Braff's character in Garden State, I can't really remember a time before I was taking an antidepressant of some sort. The reason that I've been on Effexor for 12 years is that it works. A month after starting Effexor at 18, I was able to start taking classes at Columbia University, after having dropped out of high school due to what was officially classified by the State of New York as "emotional disturbance". I'd like to think my turbulent adolescence - the cutting, the sleeplessness, the inability to leave the house, the bouts of rage that caused me to kick holes in the wall, spending half my time locked in the bathroom- was unique, but I know that it is not. It was just turbulent. Adolescence tends to be.
Now I support myself and I've held down a job for more than five years. I live in an apartment that I pay my share of the rent for. These are major achievements, a fact I often forget. A few years ago, I couldn't imagine a future for myself that didn't involve either hospitalization or some sort of adult halfway house for the emotionally crippled. I'm not exaggerating; one of my therapists posed the question to me, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "supervised adult home" was the best I could do.
Most of us can mark our lives in phases marked by major events in our lives - "childhood" may have ended when you went off to college, or your life may have been changed the day you met an important person in your life - your boyfriend, your birth mother, whatever the hell it is that's been significant to you.
I've got a couple of these. My family moved from Brooklyn to Roosevelt Island in 1990, the summer I turned 11. I can neatly divide my life into a "Brooklyn" era and a "Roosevelt Island" era. When I moved out of my parents' place in 2005, the "Jersey" era was born. And so forth.
That second era can also be demarcated another way, because that was the summer I was hospitalized for clinical depression, which manifested itself as a separation anxiety so severe that I couldn't bear to leave my mother - not to go to school, not to allow her to go to work, not at all. I have memories of this time that include locking myself in the bathroom, which only locked with a hook-and-eye, and having my mom desperately thrust a butterknife up through the crack in the door to get it open; of sitting on our backyard swingset in the rain while the neighbors called the cops because of my screaming that I would kill myself if I had to get on that schoolbus. And almost meaning it. Almost.
So. While my family was packing up boxes and getting ready to move to a new borough, I was living in a state of what my memory tells me was perpetually swollen-eyed, hiccupping agony (interrupted by occasional bouts of calm) in the children's psychiatric ward at St Vincent's. They prescribed me my first mood stabilizer there, a little orange pill called nortriptyline. It was the first of many. I was on Prozac, I was on Zoloft, I was on some pill whose name escapes me that gave me a side-effect so comical and strange that I hesitate to mention it here.
It took me a long time to see my depression as a chemical imbalance rather than a personality flaw. One of ny symptoms is a self-esteem so low that it took me quite a long time to stop asking my friends why they would possibly want to be friends with me. Even with Effexor, before coffee most mornings I walk down the street and imagine my footsteps shaking the earth, my jowls trembling, and fellow commuters veering away from me in disgust. Most of the time I feel okay, but once a month, my hormones overtake the effectiveness of the drug and for a few days I cry myself to sleep each night, imagining wrapping the bed-curtains around my neck.
The lows on Effexor are rarely as low as they were before Effexor, though. Without it, I'm certain I'd be dead. With it, I'm a mostly-functioning adult contributing, however meagerly, to society. I pay my bills on time (usually), go out with friends (when they make me) and try to remember to change the kitty litter without being told. I even have fun, sometimes. There was even some dating, for a time. You know, like the "normies" do.
Which I am. I'm as normal as anyone else with a chronic condition - arthritis, migraines. I control it with medication, I live my life the best I can. I'm not ashamed of the condition itself, although I'm occasionally ashamed by my behavior. I'm not always the best friend, sister, daughter, roommate or employee. Sometimes the choices I make are not so great. I own those mistakes, and I don't blame my depression for them - they're all me. But I do thank my Effexor that there aren't more.
7 Comments:
I love you, honey.
I don't know if it freaks you out when 'lurkers' comment on your blog, but I'm a lurker, and thank you for this post. As someone who recently started therapy, then stopped, and is thinking about starting again, it helps to know there are others out there who struggle.
Anyway, thanks. Keep on truckin.
@Ade, love you too.
@Anon, thanks for letting me know, that makes me happy. Not that you struggle, but that you got something positive from my post.
Look how far you've come. I'm so proud of you and love you, in all your stages there is only one you.
Oh anti-depression side effects... My two favorites: short spells of dizziness that lasted for two seconds but happened about twenty times a minute and the inability to have an organism. I have depression but I will tell you that there is nothing more depressing then masturbating for half an hour and not getting any results.
@ Anon, LOL @ "organisms"! Heh.
I recall it was no picnic.
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