I am not the type of person to be negative or despondent in writing. I do my fair share of being negative with my husband, talking about things that annoy me and being mad at myself for being so annoyed. Though there is something about writing that I do not want to be negative. Maybe I feel like there is some magical power of saving your own text and it will change everything. Maybe I want to be someone else when I write, someone perfect. But I know that I cannot be perfect and perfection is nothing but an illusion. This is why I am writing right now in the first place.
Last week I just got over my period, and it was a bad one. I am talking negative, “why am I living” type of bad. I have been searching on google “been off of antidepressants” for an answer and I have found a couple. I have found people who are saying around the 6th month mark up to 12 months you have some sort of change and you feel withdrawal effects again. It is not like they ever went totally away but it gets worse during this time. WHY? Ugh! I was just starting to feel normal again, whatever normal is.
Back to the beginning, I am going to be negative now. I am going to change my ways to find out who I am because I am sick of being negative to people who do not deserve it. My husband is loving, generous and just tries to make me happy all the time, he shouldn’t have to put up with me crying and being negative. So here goes nothing, here is my negative thoughts, hoping they will shine a light to something positive:
I am so annoyed with myself sometimes. I have a feeling of emptiness inside me, that I am not living the “right life.” I feel like I should be someone else, I should be working somewhere else and I should look different. I feel like I have every symptom of ADD, OCD, Bipolar, depression etc. I FEEL TOO MUCH. I know deep down that I am on the road to recovery and that I need to learn to let go but it has been a constant struggle. For the last couple of months it has gone by okay, but there are still times, like this last period where I went to the deep end again. Someday I want to know the deep-end exists and wave hello to it. I do not want to go into it. Why? Because I know better. I KNOW BETTER. Right now I feel like I sound crazy which is one of my biggest fears. I have a constant burning fear inside of me that I am going to “sound crazy, look crazy or BE crazy.” I feel sometimes that I am fighting with myself, battling this emptiness and vacuum of anything happy. I have SO much to be happy about. I have a great husband who is there for me every second, my mom is amazing and sweet, I have adorable pets, a beautiful home and I have so much to look forward to in life. I know that, but why can’t my mind fully comprehend it? Most of the time I think it does, but there are these times where my brain plays tricks on me and tells me this is all an illusion and it will all fade away as quickly as it came. Someday I will be alone, scared and empty. Why does my mind switch to that form of thinking every time I realize how GOOD my life really is? Why is it so easy for me to cry when I think about being alone someday? I think about everything that could go wrong. I think about family members who are now alone, old and bitter and I visualize myself becoming them. I am afraid of losing my happiness and my love. I am afraid of not having my husband with me forever because he is my rock; he means so much to me. I think too much about the past and the future, when all I want to do is be present.
My husband says it is my hormones messing with me, that the antidepressants are out of my system and my body has to change. I have read it and heard it from several people that your emotions/drive changes after being off of antidepressants for a while due to your amygdala and hippocampus being affected by the hormonal changes and cortisol levels. I know this and I am trying my best to comprehend it in its entirety but my mind keeps switching to “that is crap, you are just crazy.” I think sometimes that I don’t know who I am. I am having an identity crisis at the age of 28. I started taking antidepressants at 15, quite possibly they stunted my emotional growth and my system is being over-loaded with thoughts and ideas of who I am and what I should be.
What do I think I will get out of writing this and what do I want?
Maybe if I write down all my deepest fears and lay it all out there for everyone and myself to see, maybe I will see some sort of pattern and it will aid me in this current change. I will be true and it will somehow allow truth to open my eyes to reality and love. I want to be happy. That sounds so traditional and illusive but I want to have a sense of being. I want to be present. I want to be okay with living life, cleaning, working, sleeping and awaking. I want to be an adult and take responsibility for myself and my actions. I want to treat people like I would want them to treat me, with graciousness and generosity. When I am in pain, I want to learn from it instead of be so fearful of it. I want to know that I will not be afraid of what my mind might conjure up and that I am normal.
Again, I view the words “normal” and “perfection” to be an illusion, but there is a fine line between grasping those views and living. We live in a world that allows people to be discriminated every day, gossip is negativity and we learn at a very young age that we have to either “fit in or get out” in most situations. People try desperately to be someone they are not and maybe that is what I did. Instead of coping with my thoughts and my bad PMS at 15, I took an antidepressant in hopes of the almighty “perfection.” Oh and let me tell you, to most people it looked like I had it down. Until I crashed, and had to pick up the pieces by taking even more antidepressants. That is the past.
The future is bright and full. There is so much now that I never had before. I have a lot to give and I have been given a lot. I am unique, unlike anyone else and not “perfect” or “normal.” I am better than normal, I am me. I need to find that light inside me every time my mind tries to blow it out and I am hoping that time will heal my emotional, hormonal or coping-skill related wounds. I think it will, at least for now.
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