Going well
Look, it's me! *resurrects momentarily*
Life has been... pretty darn good recently.
So the first medication I tried had intolerable side-effects, the second one had nasty side effects for a while, which became manageable after a few weeks and have since essentially cleared up. I am on a moderate dose of Zoloft (sertraline) and apparently (in combination with zinc supplementation, long story) it fucking works.
O. M. F. G. I feel... clear, for the first time in a very very long time, like my brain is working with me rather than against me.
I have, among my memories, two shining moments of peace and calm. One is when I was a small girl, perhaps three, maybe even five, playing in the shade in our backyard with a large piece of fabric draped over my arms, spinning around being a butterfly--and for a moment the breeze caught the fabric just right. And one when I was perhaps twenty-five, on a summer night when everything was going right and the water in our pool had reached 28 degrees, breathing out and sinking down through the water to lie on the bottom of the pool and stare up through the wavering reflections at the stars. (This second, by the way, is the inspiration for my journal theme.) These have been, throughout my life, the only two times I have felt like that. Oh, I've been happy, I've been excited, I've been exuberant, I've been proud, I've been overwhelmed by love and joy and wonder. But that state of... calm contentment... only twice, ever, and only momentary even then.
And now... well, I won't say every moment feels like that all the time, because that would be frightening. I've got stuff to do with my life, and a whole range of emotions to feel. But that state feels... attainable. It's something I'm reaching regularly. It's there every night when I'm sitting next to one of my children reading a story, feeling my arm around them, and it is perfect. No fidgeting or frantically spinning stories in my head to keep myself still, or time-checking or trying to scrub bad thoughts out of my brain or twitching towards my phone for something to drown it all out. Just... being there.
This, then, is why my psychologist said to me, in resignation, when I had explained the horrible things that meditation was doing to me: you have no idea what calm feels like, do you? Because no. No, outside those two fleeting moments in my memory, I didn't. Now, it's just there.
Going to sleep! Oh my GOD! I get tired and I can just... put down what I'm doing--I can always keep going tomorrow after all--lie down, and... feel warm and comfortable in my bed. And after a few minutes, fall asleep. What the FUCK!?! Is this what sleep is supposed to be like?! This is literally the first time in my life that it's not been actively traumatic, the very worst part of the day. I'm averaging like an hour more sleep a night than I was.
I'm not losing my temper all the time anymore, either. I was at a positive education seminar the other night, and it occurred to me that I actually couldn't remember the last time I'd yelled at my kids. Which is interesting for two reasons: both that it's obviously far less frequent, but also that it's not waiting there as a panic-inducing failure that needs to be erased by ritual self-flagellation. I'm not so rigid on making sure everyone follows exactly the way I want things to be done. I'm not holding onto my sanity by the bare edges of my fingernails, constantly waiting for the latest straw that breaks my back. Sometimes we're late, or forget things, and you know that's not a tremendously big deal. And you know, we're probably late less, forget less, than back when I was in a panic over it all the time.
Getting stuff done! Yeah. I can do some things, not in a frantic panic of efficiency, following my coolly calculated plan to run from place to place all day and tick the top 5% of things off my extensive to do list (VERY extensive, because unless I write EVERYTHING down in minute detail I'm too overwhelmed to focus on anything), and do nothing at all else for weeks or months until the to do list is done for fear of never starting again? No, now I can do a few jobs I feel like doing, enjoy doing them, spend a couple of hours later on relaxing, get up and do a few more jobs later, occasionally list out and reorganise a couple of things to be more efficient but not be tied to the results if something else comes up... and the next day, not have to force myself up and onto the hamster wheel, just... feel like doing some more! Awesome.
The obsessional thoughts... are not gone, but they are dramatically, dramatically reduced. I still get maybe 3-5 incidents per day that make me react physically, but not the hundreds and hundreds it was. Even those aren't as intense. I don't get caught up in a loop on them. I don't drive myself to tears of despair with the inability to break that loop, it's more of a two second... ah, crap, that one got me, moving on. And for the most part, they don't feel as viceral and tactile and disturbing, they're just fluctuations in my thoughts that pass straight through to the other side without making me terrified that I might be a terrible person.
I feel... stable. I've been stable in that stability for about two months now. I feel like I'm actually in my body, actually living my life, rather than waiting for the opportunity to do so. I feel like I never realised how bad it was, how all-consuming, how much of a serious impact it was all having on my entire life until it just... doesn't have to be that way. Wow. I am never, ever going off these meds.
I've not been writing. At all. I don't know whether I got a bit burned out, whether I just don't need that as an outlet for/distraction from my brain right now, whether I'm afraid to find out for sure whether it's got any easier without the obsessionality, whether once I missed the first fan-flashworks deadline I lost my impetus to do something specific right at this moment, whether losing the midnight oh-god-I-don't-want-to-sleep hours that I've always had means I don't have the time, whether I'm just enjoying sucking the marrow out of all the things I've been missing in my real life at the moment too much to want to immerse myself in another world... or a bit of all of the above.
I'm sure I'll be back in time. But for now, I'm busy living, and I'm happy with that. :)
Comments welcome on the original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
Life has been... pretty darn good recently.
So the first medication I tried had intolerable side-effects, the second one had nasty side effects for a while, which became manageable after a few weeks and have since essentially cleared up. I am on a moderate dose of Zoloft (sertraline) and apparently (in combination with zinc supplementation, long story) it fucking works.
O. M. F. G. I feel... clear, for the first time in a very very long time, like my brain is working with me rather than against me.
I have, among my memories, two shining moments of peace and calm. One is when I was a small girl, perhaps three, maybe even five, playing in the shade in our backyard with a large piece of fabric draped over my arms, spinning around being a butterfly--and for a moment the breeze caught the fabric just right. And one when I was perhaps twenty-five, on a summer night when everything was going right and the water in our pool had reached 28 degrees, breathing out and sinking down through the water to lie on the bottom of the pool and stare up through the wavering reflections at the stars. (This second, by the way, is the inspiration for my journal theme.) These have been, throughout my life, the only two times I have felt like that. Oh, I've been happy, I've been excited, I've been exuberant, I've been proud, I've been overwhelmed by love and joy and wonder. But that state of... calm contentment... only twice, ever, and only momentary even then.
And now... well, I won't say every moment feels like that all the time, because that would be frightening. I've got stuff to do with my life, and a whole range of emotions to feel. But that state feels... attainable. It's something I'm reaching regularly. It's there every night when I'm sitting next to one of my children reading a story, feeling my arm around them, and it is perfect. No fidgeting or frantically spinning stories in my head to keep myself still, or time-checking or trying to scrub bad thoughts out of my brain or twitching towards my phone for something to drown it all out. Just... being there.
This, then, is why my psychologist said to me, in resignation, when I had explained the horrible things that meditation was doing to me: you have no idea what calm feels like, do you? Because no. No, outside those two fleeting moments in my memory, I didn't. Now, it's just there.
Going to sleep! Oh my GOD! I get tired and I can just... put down what I'm doing--I can always keep going tomorrow after all--lie down, and... feel warm and comfortable in my bed. And after a few minutes, fall asleep. What the FUCK!?! Is this what sleep is supposed to be like?! This is literally the first time in my life that it's not been actively traumatic, the very worst part of the day. I'm averaging like an hour more sleep a night than I was.
I'm not losing my temper all the time anymore, either. I was at a positive education seminar the other night, and it occurred to me that I actually couldn't remember the last time I'd yelled at my kids. Which is interesting for two reasons: both that it's obviously far less frequent, but also that it's not waiting there as a panic-inducing failure that needs to be erased by ritual self-flagellation. I'm not so rigid on making sure everyone follows exactly the way I want things to be done. I'm not holding onto my sanity by the bare edges of my fingernails, constantly waiting for the latest straw that breaks my back. Sometimes we're late, or forget things, and you know that's not a tremendously big deal. And you know, we're probably late less, forget less, than back when I was in a panic over it all the time.
Getting stuff done! Yeah. I can do some things, not in a frantic panic of efficiency, following my coolly calculated plan to run from place to place all day and tick the top 5% of things off my extensive to do list (VERY extensive, because unless I write EVERYTHING down in minute detail I'm too overwhelmed to focus on anything), and do nothing at all else for weeks or months until the to do list is done for fear of never starting again? No, now I can do a few jobs I feel like doing, enjoy doing them, spend a couple of hours later on relaxing, get up and do a few more jobs later, occasionally list out and reorganise a couple of things to be more efficient but not be tied to the results if something else comes up... and the next day, not have to force myself up and onto the hamster wheel, just... feel like doing some more! Awesome.
The obsessional thoughts... are not gone, but they are dramatically, dramatically reduced. I still get maybe 3-5 incidents per day that make me react physically, but not the hundreds and hundreds it was. Even those aren't as intense. I don't get caught up in a loop on them. I don't drive myself to tears of despair with the inability to break that loop, it's more of a two second... ah, crap, that one got me, moving on. And for the most part, they don't feel as viceral and tactile and disturbing, they're just fluctuations in my thoughts that pass straight through to the other side without making me terrified that I might be a terrible person.
I feel... stable. I've been stable in that stability for about two months now. I feel like I'm actually in my body, actually living my life, rather than waiting for the opportunity to do so. I feel like I never realised how bad it was, how all-consuming, how much of a serious impact it was all having on my entire life until it just... doesn't have to be that way. Wow. I am never, ever going off these meds.
I've not been writing. At all. I don't know whether I got a bit burned out, whether I just don't need that as an outlet for/distraction from my brain right now, whether I'm afraid to find out for sure whether it's got any easier without the obsessionality, whether once I missed the first fan-flashworks deadline I lost my impetus to do something specific right at this moment, whether losing the midnight oh-god-I-don't-want-to-sleep hours that I've always had means I don't have the time, whether I'm just enjoying sucking the marrow out of all the things I've been missing in my real life at the moment too much to want to immerse myself in another world... or a bit of all of the above.
I'm sure I'll be back in time. But for now, I'm busy living, and I'm happy with that. :)
Comments welcome on the original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.