Drugs to the rescue
Isn't chemistry amazing? After what feels like an eternity of near-constant panic and drenching anxiety, a tiny peach-colored pill has proven itself to have the ability to bring me, in under 30 minutes, back to a state very closely resembling normality. I can think. I can eat. I can laugh. I can stay up half the night writing a two-page paper I've been sweating over (literally, sweating) for nearly two weeks, and end up reasonably satisfied with the result.
I still hate it that my brain is like this, that it breaks down so easily under conditions that would hardly phase a "normal" person. But as much as I wish things were otherwise, and as hard as I've tried to convince myself that this happens to me only because I'm a weak, lazy and in every way substandard and unacceptable person ... I really can't argue with what my body is doing. Because it really is my body that's doing it. It's not me, trying to get out of doing something by feigning illness ....
The fact that the pills work is strangely validating. If I were faking it because I'm lazy and a terrible person, then they probably wouldn't make any difference. But they do. I feel like my normal self again.
So now I have three tasks before me.
1. Get through the meeting at which I rescind my agreement to quit Job #1 to start Job #2, and make my offer to continue working for Job #2 on my own, strictly limited terms. My hope is that this will happen on Tuesday. I already spoke to one person from Job #2 about it (withholding most of the unpleasant and unflattering details) and she was so kind and reassuring that I'm feeling a lot less anxious about telling the big boss. I am allowed to take care of myself, she reminded me. To them, it's just business. To me, it's my life. This part, however, is now the least of my problems.
2. I also need to get my brain out of this tailspin of freakedoutness as quickly as possible, and settle my chemicals down again to the point where I can throw out the rest of these pills. Because as great as it feels to feel like me again, I feel even better when I know that the feeling is coming not from a bottle but from my own healthy, happy, and well-balanced brain.
3. Finally, and this is the part that may take some time ... I need to try to figure out a way to have this Not keep happening again every few years for the rest of my life. Part of it, the doctors say, is "constitutional" – it seems to be just the way I'm made. But I really believe, too, that part of it is also because of the way I react to certain kinds of stress. I hope and believe (or at least really, really want to believe) that if I can learn better ways to behave – things to DO – in these situations, I can keep the stress from escalating to the point where my mind goes "sproing!" and all the gears and springs and sprockets go flying across the room and scattering to all the corners, and I have to spend the next few weeks or months or even possibly years crawling around on my hands and knees gathering them up and painstakingly assembling them again into some semblance of a functioning piece of machinery.
If the tiny little pill can help me do that, I'll take the help. But if I can figure out how to keep it all together in the first place, that would be so much better, wouldn't it?
I still hate it that my brain is like this, that it breaks down so easily under conditions that would hardly phase a "normal" person. But as much as I wish things were otherwise, and as hard as I've tried to convince myself that this happens to me only because I'm a weak, lazy and in every way substandard and unacceptable person ... I really can't argue with what my body is doing. Because it really is my body that's doing it. It's not me, trying to get out of doing something by feigning illness ....
The fact that the pills work is strangely validating. If I were faking it because I'm lazy and a terrible person, then they probably wouldn't make any difference. But they do. I feel like my normal self again.
So now I have three tasks before me.
1. Get through the meeting at which I rescind my agreement to quit Job #1 to start Job #2, and make my offer to continue working for Job #2 on my own, strictly limited terms. My hope is that this will happen on Tuesday. I already spoke to one person from Job #2 about it (withholding most of the unpleasant and unflattering details) and she was so kind and reassuring that I'm feeling a lot less anxious about telling the big boss. I am allowed to take care of myself, she reminded me. To them, it's just business. To me, it's my life. This part, however, is now the least of my problems.
2. I also need to get my brain out of this tailspin of freakedoutness as quickly as possible, and settle my chemicals down again to the point where I can throw out the rest of these pills. Because as great as it feels to feel like me again, I feel even better when I know that the feeling is coming not from a bottle but from my own healthy, happy, and well-balanced brain.
3. Finally, and this is the part that may take some time ... I need to try to figure out a way to have this Not keep happening again every few years for the rest of my life. Part of it, the doctors say, is "constitutional" – it seems to be just the way I'm made. But I really believe, too, that part of it is also because of the way I react to certain kinds of stress. I hope and believe (or at least really, really want to believe) that if I can learn better ways to behave – things to DO – in these situations, I can keep the stress from escalating to the point where my mind goes "sproing!" and all the gears and springs and sprockets go flying across the room and scattering to all the corners, and I have to spend the next few weeks or months or even possibly years crawling around on my hands and knees gathering them up and painstakingly assembling them again into some semblance of a functioning piece of machinery.
If the tiny little pill can help me do that, I'll take the help. But if I can figure out how to keep it all together in the first place, that would be so much better, wouldn't it?
1 Comments:
If there's anyone I know least likely to abuse the pills, it's probably you.
It's peculiar that--for as extraordinary a person as you are--you seem also to have more-than-ordinary expectations of your own integrity, personal strength, and imperviousness.
Is it because you are Saturday's warrior? Where much is given, is this much expected? Did God make a covenant with you and do a number on your psyche? Or is it the radical Left, replacing removed nobility with rugged individual responsibility and the same old horrible guilt?
I'm glad you have the chill pills; they're in good hands and helping a good person.
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