The cure
My brain seems to get worse and worse as I get older. I'm back on antidepressants and the difference is staggering. It's not well known how shitty you feel going off of them, long after the obvious side effects have gone. I could not have a normal, stable moment for the last four months. Then suddenly I'm okay again.
The layers of depression interest me a lot. There are levels you go through as you bottom out. Until I had read about this I wasn't even aware, but afterward it made perfect sense and I could almost feel when I'd passed over. For me it starts out as just a bad feeling. But it's a bad feeling looking to react with an idea. When I find an idea that goes with that bad feeling, the reaction is staggering. Something will eat at me until I feel like I'm coming out of my skin. It really does come in waves, half an hour bad, half getting by. Obsession is the next level below depression. You cannot stop thinking about something, and it usually hurts, and it drives you nuts.
Then I take wellbutrin and suddenly I'm normal again. It's strange when everything you feel is based around a deficiency. When I leveled off again, I noticed it after I suddenly got the urge to cook. I went out and made a cantaloupe and watercress salad with a raspberry vinaigrette. It was fucking delicious. Last time I went on antidepressants, I went out and bought rats. Maybe it's just the urge to do something feels so different when you're on an even keel. Whereas it took me an immense amount of effort just to do anything before, suddenly all I have to do is think about it and I'm already halfway done doing it.
I was afraid it'd mute my writing. I'd just finished a book, and didn't want to follow up my efforts by castrating my creativity. But it doesn't feel like that's going to happen. The best part about being abnormally depressed is that I could find ideas like scabs on my body, and pick at them. And by the time I was done it'd be a work of art. I didn't want to lose that. You can't do it for long but when you successfully redirect the charging of the bulls and put them back out to pasture, it's self-actualizing. It's nothing to die for though.
And I still write obsessively, which is all I wanted to keep.
The layers of depression interest me a lot. There are levels you go through as you bottom out. Until I had read about this I wasn't even aware, but afterward it made perfect sense and I could almost feel when I'd passed over. For me it starts out as just a bad feeling. But it's a bad feeling looking to react with an idea. When I find an idea that goes with that bad feeling, the reaction is staggering. Something will eat at me until I feel like I'm coming out of my skin. It really does come in waves, half an hour bad, half getting by. Obsession is the next level below depression. You cannot stop thinking about something, and it usually hurts, and it drives you nuts.
Then I take wellbutrin and suddenly I'm normal again. It's strange when everything you feel is based around a deficiency. When I leveled off again, I noticed it after I suddenly got the urge to cook. I went out and made a cantaloupe and watercress salad with a raspberry vinaigrette. It was fucking delicious. Last time I went on antidepressants, I went out and bought rats. Maybe it's just the urge to do something feels so different when you're on an even keel. Whereas it took me an immense amount of effort just to do anything before, suddenly all I have to do is think about it and I'm already halfway done doing it.
I was afraid it'd mute my writing. I'd just finished a book, and didn't want to follow up my efforts by castrating my creativity. But it doesn't feel like that's going to happen. The best part about being abnormally depressed is that I could find ideas like scabs on my body, and pick at them. And by the time I was done it'd be a work of art. I didn't want to lose that. You can't do it for long but when you successfully redirect the charging of the bulls and put them back out to pasture, it's self-actualizing. It's nothing to die for though.
And I still write obsessively, which is all I wanted to keep.