been down this road before

Last week I made the decision to go back on antidepressants. I had stopped taking my Zoloft back in February sort of by accident. First I just kept forgetting to take it. Then I noticed the awful withdrawal symptoms, mainly that feeling of turning your head quickly and leaving your face behind, and began to think anything that has that kind of effect when you get it out of your system you maybe don't want in your system in the first place? On top of that, we were in a difficult financial situation with really lousy health insurance, and I was tired of forking over whatever it was each month and feeling really bitter about it. So I began to heroically think I could do just fine without it, so why don't we take life unmedicated for a whirl and see how we do?

We did okay for a while, except that apparently we seemed to develop sudden onset multiple personality disorder because we began referring to ourselves as "we."

I mean I did okay for a while, and especially well considering that our lives (shit, there I go again, but I mean "our" as in, my family's) between February and May were peppered with serious crises, and I just soldiered on, if not happily, then at least with a feeling of strength and confidence.

Now, though, I've come to face the fact that I feel a fairly constant dread and deep resistance to the responsibilities of my life. It's this impulse to just crawl away and leave everything behind forever. It's not that I want to kill myself; it's that I want to get the hell out--out of my skin, my home, my city. Always.

I don't expect life to be a walk in the park. But I do think it's not too much to want to find life joyful some of the time, and to tolerate the crappy parts with some degree of grace the rest of the time.

So I dug my half-empty (see how depressed I am?) bottle of Zoloft out of the cupboard and set it out on the kitchen counter. Now all I have to do is remember to take it.