Memoir section 20: "Descent"
Time to take a break from ruminating on my mother's letter to post another section of the memoir.
I got the prescription from the psychiatrist my shrink recommended. It was three days before I took it, afraid it would make things worse, or just afraid. Finally I shook a pill out of the bottle before bed and swallowed it, jittery as soon as it was too late. I got into bed and lay there rocking on my side as usual, my mind sparrowing between unformed thoughts as it always did, circling and spiraling. I was heavier than usual, and I didn't like the newness, but I admitted that it wasn't a worse feeling, just different.
Then I woke up, disoriented. Something was strange, and I couldn't figure out what. My heart wasn't pounding, but I could feel it beating, distracting me from whatever was wrong. I lay there for several minutes before I realized: it was light out. I tried to remember waking up in the middle of the night, I always did, three or four times usually, so it had to be there. But I just remembered being heavy, then vague dreams without surroundings or events, then waking in daylight. It was unsettling, like missing several stops on the subway. I knew this was the way most people slept, but it didn't feel right.
I got used to it, though. I realized different things over the next couple of weeks. Before the drug, I would go to bed, lie on one side for 15 or 20 minutes until I got uncomfortable - a cramp, a pressure point, a neck strain - and then I'd roll over, get uncomfortable, and roll back. I did it several times a night, every night, for a couple of hours. Now I remembered two rolls a night, maybe three. Every night. What I didn't remember was the feeling of being shoved off the cliff as I approached sleep. I remembered flitting, then floating, then morning. When I did wake up in the night to go to the bathroom, I didn't have to turn on the light, because I didn't feel something ominous on the other side of the bedroom door.
But I woke up with my heart beating. It wasn't pounding or racing, just noticeable. It seemed to portend something, some ominous thing on the horizon. At least it wasn't lurking behind me, but I still couldn't see it. There wasn't quite enough light. Even at noon on a cloudless July day, it seemed dark. Perhaps it was summer smog.
Now I looked forward to bedtime, but in the morning I kept my eyes closed for half an hour, an hour, dreading having to move, having to think. My eyes leaked tears, and I thought, Stop it. Stop being lazy and ridiculous and get up and it'll be fine.
I sat in my chair in the living room, my laptop open. I had my fingers on the keys, ready to start typing as soon as the sentences formed in my mind. I waited, frozen, my fingers still in place, and 20 minutes went by and I couldn't move. No, I wasn't frozen; I was pushing against a brick wall, I was pushing with all my might but it wasn't moving. No, it was moving. It was leaning toward me, bending me backwards, and now I'd been pushing so long I was too tired to step aside, too slow to get out of the way before it fell and crushed me. It hadn't happened yet, but it was coming. I slowly moved my hands away from the keyboard, feeling my heart beating calmly, muffled. My cheeks stung with salt, because another 20 minutes had gone by and I'd been crying soundlessly the whole time.
I thought the psychiatrist would take me off the Risperdal, so I didn't call right away. I couldn't give up the sleep; it was the only good thing I had. I sat in my chair in the living room with my hand on the TV remote. But I didn't turn it on, because I couldn't think of anything I wanted to watch. Everything seemed like it would take too much energy to watch. It hurt to just think about following an hour-long drama. I finally turned to Sesame Street, but their kindness and cooperation made me cry. I wanted to feel that comfort, but it was so far away, so dim, and I realized I would never feel it again. This muted, beige world was forever.
He didn't take me off the Risperdal. "This isn't the medication. You're not sedated; you're depressed. You've probably been depressed all along, but your agitation covered it."
I was already crying, but the tears flowed faster. "I don't want to take an antidepressant again."
He nodded. "Tell me what it was like last time?"
"It was like having no skin. Everything was sandpaper, even good things hurt. And people, I thought everyone was angry, I kept expecting them to yell, or to hit me, or to... I don't know."
"So: what you've been feeling up until the Risperdal." I nodded resignedly. "The bad news is, I recommend an antidepressant. The good news is, I don't think it will rip your skin off this time, because you're already there." I found myself looking him in the eye; I didn't know I was glaring until he laughed shortly and nodded approval. "Yeah, I know, but hear me out. Nine years ago, you had never felt anything but depressed. You didn't even really feel depressed, I'm thinking, because that's a feeling. Think about it: you have no skin right now, either, do you?" I don't know if I nodded or not. "Antidepressants get rid of the numbness before they get rid of the depression. So you suddenly, for the first time in your life, had to feel everything, with no buffer. No real therapeutic relationship, no family, friends you'd only known a year, who were a decade less mature than they are now. And you were a decade less mature - or less, much less. You were not ready to feel anything, let alone everything."
"I'm not ready now!"
"But you are. Because you're doing it. You've been feeling more than your brain wiring can handle. The Risperdal says, 'Okay, we don't need to feel all-encompassing terror in response to every stimulus.' But before that you dealt with a hell of a lot of fear, without just constantly shutting off." He put up a hand. "I said 'constantly'; even so-called normal people are entitled to a little dissociation after, say, 12 hours straight.
"One upside to terror is, you can't feel anything else at the time. Now I've stolen your terror, and you're 'free' to feel this hideous, soul-crushing anguish that's been there under the surface. Again, your brain is not wired right, so you feel a double dose, or triple. But you're feeling it!" He leaned forward a little. "You are doing exactly what you're supposed to do. Your anguish is infinitely more healthy than numbness.
"But that doesn't mean it's healthy. So we tweak your brain chemistry, serotonin this time, until you can feel something besides sadness. Including terror sometimes. And it won't magically grow a new skin for you. But you're learning to do that yourself."
But it takes over a month to begin to see a change, he told me, and since I was starting at a low dosage for two weeks to minimize side effects, it'd probably be two months.
"And if it doesn't help?" I hadn't wanted to say it out loud because I didn't want an answer, but he nodded, a little less gregarious.
"Then we'll both be really pissed off that I didn't start with one of the other meds. We're really playing the odds; this is the best option for the most people, but you might not be most people. And my own optimism isn't going to help you much right now, is it? If it doesn't work, we'll move on to another med. We will find something that works. No matter what it is, it's going to take longer that you'd like. But I can promise that you won't always be like this. You don't have to believe that now, but remember it.
I bought a soda with the Prozac prescription and took the first capsule on the subway ride home. I willed myself to have a placebo effect. But I didn't have the energy, and it made time drag even more. I went to bed by 10.
My shrink said it was okay to distract myself. It wasn't the same as dissociation, he said, but I couldn't tell the difference. "When you watch TV, do you remember the name of the program you just watched?"
"Yeah, but I can't keep track of what's happened."
"But you don't think, 'Where did the last hour go?'"
I shook my head. "It's always like, it seems like it's an hour between commercial breaks."
"Then that's not dissociation."
My throat burned with held-back tears. "I miss the missing time."
"I know."
His voice was low with sadness, and I met his eyes without planning to. They were soft with pain, with knowing. I couldn't breathe through the dry sobs. I hid my face behind the beige throw pillow, not pressing against it because I didn't want to soak it, but I could feel him seeing me, anyway. I remembered the afternoon after the endoscopy, the hug Chris gave me, barely touching, knowing not to hold me hard. Now I was being crushed by the memory of that softness, any by my shrink's softness, squeezed in a huge fist, and I didn't understand how I could keep drawing in air for another sob, and then for words, "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do."
"You're doing all you have to do. This is all you have to do right now."
Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/57156.html. Feel free to comment there
comments
I got the prescription from the psychiatrist my shrink recommended. It was three days before I took it, afraid it would make things worse, or just afraid. Finally I shook a pill out of the bottle before bed and swallowed it, jittery as soon as it was too late. I got into bed and lay there rocking on my side as usual, my mind sparrowing between unformed thoughts as it always did, circling and spiraling. I was heavier than usual, and I didn't like the newness, but I admitted that it wasn't a worse feeling, just different.
Then I woke up, disoriented. Something was strange, and I couldn't figure out what. My heart wasn't pounding, but I could feel it beating, distracting me from whatever was wrong. I lay there for several minutes before I realized: it was light out. I tried to remember waking up in the middle of the night, I always did, three or four times usually, so it had to be there. But I just remembered being heavy, then vague dreams without surroundings or events, then waking in daylight. It was unsettling, like missing several stops on the subway. I knew this was the way most people slept, but it didn't feel right.
I got used to it, though. I realized different things over the next couple of weeks. Before the drug, I would go to bed, lie on one side for 15 or 20 minutes until I got uncomfortable - a cramp, a pressure point, a neck strain - and then I'd roll over, get uncomfortable, and roll back. I did it several times a night, every night, for a couple of hours. Now I remembered two rolls a night, maybe three. Every night. What I didn't remember was the feeling of being shoved off the cliff as I approached sleep. I remembered flitting, then floating, then morning. When I did wake up in the night to go to the bathroom, I didn't have to turn on the light, because I didn't feel something ominous on the other side of the bedroom door.
But I woke up with my heart beating. It wasn't pounding or racing, just noticeable. It seemed to portend something, some ominous thing on the horizon. At least it wasn't lurking behind me, but I still couldn't see it. There wasn't quite enough light. Even at noon on a cloudless July day, it seemed dark. Perhaps it was summer smog.
Now I looked forward to bedtime, but in the morning I kept my eyes closed for half an hour, an hour, dreading having to move, having to think. My eyes leaked tears, and I thought, Stop it. Stop being lazy and ridiculous and get up and it'll be fine.
I sat in my chair in the living room, my laptop open. I had my fingers on the keys, ready to start typing as soon as the sentences formed in my mind. I waited, frozen, my fingers still in place, and 20 minutes went by and I couldn't move. No, I wasn't frozen; I was pushing against a brick wall, I was pushing with all my might but it wasn't moving. No, it was moving. It was leaning toward me, bending me backwards, and now I'd been pushing so long I was too tired to step aside, too slow to get out of the way before it fell and crushed me. It hadn't happened yet, but it was coming. I slowly moved my hands away from the keyboard, feeling my heart beating calmly, muffled. My cheeks stung with salt, because another 20 minutes had gone by and I'd been crying soundlessly the whole time.
I thought the psychiatrist would take me off the Risperdal, so I didn't call right away. I couldn't give up the sleep; it was the only good thing I had. I sat in my chair in the living room with my hand on the TV remote. But I didn't turn it on, because I couldn't think of anything I wanted to watch. Everything seemed like it would take too much energy to watch. It hurt to just think about following an hour-long drama. I finally turned to Sesame Street, but their kindness and cooperation made me cry. I wanted to feel that comfort, but it was so far away, so dim, and I realized I would never feel it again. This muted, beige world was forever.
He didn't take me off the Risperdal. "This isn't the medication. You're not sedated; you're depressed. You've probably been depressed all along, but your agitation covered it."
I was already crying, but the tears flowed faster. "I don't want to take an antidepressant again."
He nodded. "Tell me what it was like last time?"
"It was like having no skin. Everything was sandpaper, even good things hurt. And people, I thought everyone was angry, I kept expecting them to yell, or to hit me, or to... I don't know."
"So: what you've been feeling up until the Risperdal." I nodded resignedly. "The bad news is, I recommend an antidepressant. The good news is, I don't think it will rip your skin off this time, because you're already there." I found myself looking him in the eye; I didn't know I was glaring until he laughed shortly and nodded approval. "Yeah, I know, but hear me out. Nine years ago, you had never felt anything but depressed. You didn't even really feel depressed, I'm thinking, because that's a feeling. Think about it: you have no skin right now, either, do you?" I don't know if I nodded or not. "Antidepressants get rid of the numbness before they get rid of the depression. So you suddenly, for the first time in your life, had to feel everything, with no buffer. No real therapeutic relationship, no family, friends you'd only known a year, who were a decade less mature than they are now. And you were a decade less mature - or less, much less. You were not ready to feel anything, let alone everything."
"I'm not ready now!"
"But you are. Because you're doing it. You've been feeling more than your brain wiring can handle. The Risperdal says, 'Okay, we don't need to feel all-encompassing terror in response to every stimulus.' But before that you dealt with a hell of a lot of fear, without just constantly shutting off." He put up a hand. "I said 'constantly'; even so-called normal people are entitled to a little dissociation after, say, 12 hours straight.
"One upside to terror is, you can't feel anything else at the time. Now I've stolen your terror, and you're 'free' to feel this hideous, soul-crushing anguish that's been there under the surface. Again, your brain is not wired right, so you feel a double dose, or triple. But you're feeling it!" He leaned forward a little. "You are doing exactly what you're supposed to do. Your anguish is infinitely more healthy than numbness.
"But that doesn't mean it's healthy. So we tweak your brain chemistry, serotonin this time, until you can feel something besides sadness. Including terror sometimes. And it won't magically grow a new skin for you. But you're learning to do that yourself."
But it takes over a month to begin to see a change, he told me, and since I was starting at a low dosage for two weeks to minimize side effects, it'd probably be two months.
"And if it doesn't help?" I hadn't wanted to say it out loud because I didn't want an answer, but he nodded, a little less gregarious.
"Then we'll both be really pissed off that I didn't start with one of the other meds. We're really playing the odds; this is the best option for the most people, but you might not be most people. And my own optimism isn't going to help you much right now, is it? If it doesn't work, we'll move on to another med. We will find something that works. No matter what it is, it's going to take longer that you'd like. But I can promise that you won't always be like this. You don't have to believe that now, but remember it.
I bought a soda with the Prozac prescription and took the first capsule on the subway ride home. I willed myself to have a placebo effect. But I didn't have the energy, and it made time drag even more. I went to bed by 10.
My shrink said it was okay to distract myself. It wasn't the same as dissociation, he said, but I couldn't tell the difference. "When you watch TV, do you remember the name of the program you just watched?"
"Yeah, but I can't keep track of what's happened."
"But you don't think, 'Where did the last hour go?'"
I shook my head. "It's always like, it seems like it's an hour between commercial breaks."
"Then that's not dissociation."
My throat burned with held-back tears. "I miss the missing time."
"I know."
His voice was low with sadness, and I met his eyes without planning to. They were soft with pain, with knowing. I couldn't breathe through the dry sobs. I hid my face behind the beige throw pillow, not pressing against it because I didn't want to soak it, but I could feel him seeing me, anyway. I remembered the afternoon after the endoscopy, the hug Chris gave me, barely touching, knowing not to hold me hard. Now I was being crushed by the memory of that softness, any by my shrink's softness, squeezed in a huge fist, and I didn't understand how I could keep drawing in air for another sob, and then for words, "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do."
"You're doing all you have to do. This is all you have to do right now."
Originally posted at http://violetcheetah.dreamwidth.org/57156.html. Feel free to comment there
comments