The choice to break

Hello 2012.

I won’t lie – I wasn’t exactly looking forward to you. I had all these overly ambitious expectations. This would be the year that I would get into graduate school. This would be the year that I would conquer my mental illness. This would be the year that I make something of myself. This would be the year that I could look back at, in the future, and not feel disappointed.

My overly ambitious expectations of you were the same ones I’d had of previous years, and none had really lived up to them. Maybe 2010.

And so I guess I wasn’t looking forward to getting my hopes up this time. I was hoping to just ignore that part of me that reassured me and told me that new years meant new beginnings and new hopes and dreams, and new opportunities. Until just a few days ago, I continued to pretend that 2011 never ended.

I am sorry for ignoring you.

To tell you the truth, I have been trying to keep busy. Keeping busy with work keeps me from thinking about how different my life is from the one I had envisioned when I was younger. Of course, everyone’s life is probably different from what they’d imagined it would be, but probably not everyone derives the kind of anxiety from that disconnect as I do. So I try to ignore it. I focus on my patients, whose lives really took a turn for the worse. I focus on my research, which probably won’t change the world, but might change mine, someday. I focus on writing snippets of stories (no, I still can’t finish them) and snippets of songs (writing is writing), because even my frustrations at my own creative mind still make me happy.

But I realized something recently. It’s not really your fault, is it? You’re just another passage of time in my life. You are a new beginning for new hopes and dreams and opportunities. It’s not your fault if I don’t make the most of you. It’s because of you that I get to try.

And I’m not unhappy. I’m not. I’m just… homesick. I’m at home, but I am homesick, nostalgic for the places I want to go and have never been. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not home, not really. I’m still looking for a home, and coming this far, to 2012, makes me wonder if I’ll ever find it.

I’m sure I will. I’m sure you will bring me what I need.

Best,
S.

Weaning off Lexapro, Day 101

I decided to wean off this medication in September, after taking it for around a year and three months. Why? I’m not entirely sure, now. It wasn’t causing any side effects. I guess I just didn’t want to have to stay on medication forever, and I wasn’t in school, so the lack of drug coverage was also a contributing factor, I guess. All these reasons sound fantastically stupid to me now.

Truthfully, I was expecting lots of horrible discontinuation symptoms. I was expecting brain zaps and freak outs and many other things that would eventually lead to me stabbing myself in the face. None of that happened. I weaned off very slowly, going from 10 mg to 7.5 mg, and staying there for a month, then to 5 mg for a month, and now, 2.5 mg. I didn’t feel anything at all until hitting the 5 mg mark, when I felt the mildest of flu-like symptoms. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

Now, two weeks into the 2.5 mg month, I am broken. I can only hope what I’m experiencing is a discontinuation symptom, but I suspect that it’s not.

I sat in traffic two days ago, on my way to my first day at my new job, and seriously considered getting out of the car and running away, screaming. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the steering wheel, desperately trying to convince myself to stay in the car and not step out onto the five-lane express freeway.

Later, I had another panic attack. Yesterday, I had another one.

The last two weeks have been anxiety-ridden for seemingly no reason. My previous therapists would say that there is always a reason for anxiety. Yes, perhaps I was nervous about my new job. Nervousness is normal. It’s not exactly normal for that nervousness to show itself in the form of a panic attack.

After these last three panic attacks, which I am certain were caused by NOTHING, I’m starting to question what my previous therapists have said. Is there always a reason for anxiety? That’s what we’re taught, but is it true? Because what I feel like is not like I’m anxious for any reason. I feel like there’s a hole in my brain which the medication was filling, and which is now slowly being depleted, which is why my panic attacks have returned.

I cried after I came home yesterday. When I was out, I sat across my friend at a restaurant, and she looked at me and very genuinely said, “We can leave if you want. You can go home. We don’t have to be here.”

That’s true. I don’t have to go to restaurants. I don’t have to go to the mall. I don’t have to work. I don’t have to go to school. I don’t have to go to parties, concerts, or shows. I don’t have to see my favourite musicals or my favourite bands when they come to my city. I don’t have to see France and Italy and Ireland. I don’t have to drive, go sailing, on a plane or on a train. I don’t have to see my best friend get married, or attend my own graduation ceremony. I don’t have to do anything. I could spend my life lying in the fetal position, living in fear of panic attacks.

But that’s not really living, is it?

I cried because I am scared of returning to my “life” of sitting at home and hiding because I was too afraid to step outside, and I can see it happening. The world looks different, painted with the heavy-handed brush of fear and distress. Lights are brighter to my oft-dilated pupils. The ground feels uneven. My car, my car, which I love so much, feels like a prison.

I regret, in this moment, weaning off the medication. It changed my life. It saved me, and I stupidly started weaning off, for what feels like no reason at all.

I don’t know what to do. All I know is that I messed up. I messed up.

The tao of discomfort

For the last few weeks, I’ve been slaving over graduate school applications. Well – okay, that’s a bold-faced lie. I have been far from slaving. A more accurate way to put it would be to say that I started my applications weeks ago, then spent the weeks following ruminating about how much I want to get it, how I’m not going to get in, and how my life is going to be over when I don’t get in. I spent some horrible early 2 AM-style mornings Googling “how to deal with rejection from graduate school”. Google was not too helpful, to be honest.

Well, now I’m done my applications and will be mailing them off in a couple of days. I felt some relief at being finished at first, but now I’m just sort of… terrified, I guess. Waiting to be rejected. At least I’m not being overdramatic about it.

In between all my maudlin displays of emotion and heartache over something so stupid as graduate school, I have also been searching for a job. You see, I have like seventy billion dollars of debt. I’m living at home with my parents and I hate it. So I would like to get a job so I can not be in debt anymore and also so that I can get my own apartment. That’s all I really want. No more debt and an apartment. And a new espresso machine and some new clothes. Never mind. I can do without all that. Just no more debt and an apartment.

Anyway, in a rather startling turn of events, I think I got one. A job, that is. I haven’t told anyone about it because I’m not sure if I actually have the job, but I think I have the job, because I’m “training” (see: studying like a maniac) for it and have keys and everything. So I think I have it. However, no one has actually said the H-word (see: hired) yet, so I’m trying not to count my chickens before they hatch. No one else is being trained or interviewed, though, so I think I have it. But I don’t really know, you know? I would be really glad if I got – if I have – this job. Money is good, but it’s not just that – it happens to be in my field and something that I want to do.

Still, I’m uncertain about everything, so I haven’t told anyone. No jinxing. This doesn’t count, right? Fingers crossed.

Although I’m still clearly mentally unstable, I have decided to very slowly wean off my medication. I am now on half the dose I had been on for the last year-ish. I don’t know why in particular I decided to do this – I guess I don’t want to have to depend on medication if I can do without it – but now I’m kind of regretting it. Well, no – I’m not regretting it, but I’m scared that I will come to regret it. Thus far, it’s alright. I haven’t had any real panic attacks – nothing like how it used to be. I haven’t avoided anything. I’m even able to drive around in The Big City without vomiting, and the stupid cab drivers and super annoying pedestrians there could make anyone vomit, I think.

But I am scared that I will come off the medication and I will completely regress back to that agoraphobic panic-ridden girl that couldn’t ride up eight floors in an elevator. I don’t ever want to go back to that, and I know that if I see myself going back there, I will start taking the medication again. I guess that’s a comfort – many people take SSRI’s (or similar medications) and have to switch things a billion times to find something that helps them. This was the first one I took, and it changed my life. At least I know now that if anything were to hurt me again, I have something to fall back on. I have something that worked for sure in making me feel like the centre of the bell curve. And that’s comforting.

Still, as of now, I’m not really comfortable with anything. I’m stuck in this period of waiting for what I am fairly certain will be bad news; I may or may not have a job; if I do have this job, it’s something very new and very difficult and it may cause me to fail miserably; and, of course, I live with my parents, which is hell.

Perhaps this period of discomfort is a good thing, though. Maybe it will teach me something new. Conflict leads to change and discomfort leads to growth, right? Maybe being comfortable means not being challenged, not being forced out of this bubble, not being strong-armed into living a bigger and better life. So I guess I’m okay with being uncomfortable.

Research is to me what peanut butter is to jelly

Writing personal statements as part of graduate school applications (and as part of anything) has got to be the worst thing to do ever. It’s supposed to be the one thing that sets me apart from hoards of other applicants, yet all I can come up with is cliched nonsense. “I want to go to grad school because I love research. I love research soooo much. Research is my life. I live, breathe, and eat research. Please accept me. I really am so into research. If research was a guy, I’d marry it, even though I think marriage is crazy sometimes.”

Things I think about when I lie in bed at night

– It’ll be okay.
– I hate sleeping.
– Why am I in bed?
– It’ll be fine.
– I’ll sleep okay this time.
– No weird dreams.
– Why can’t I sleep?
– Just relax.
– This time if I can’t sleep, I’m just going to get up!
– And do what? Study?
– Study what?
– I should write a song.
– What should I write a song about?
– I should write a song about being an alcoholic.
– Even though I don’t drink.
– Am I still awake? Or am I sleeping?
– Am I asleep?
– Is this real?
– I wonder if I’ll get into graduate school next year.
– I hate my feet.
– What is that sound?
– Stop freaking out!
– Go to sleep!
– SLEEP! SLEEP! SLEEP!
– Am I asleep?
– Oh my god, just get up!
– What is the meaning of life?
– What is existence?
– Do I exist?
– Is this the Matrix?
– I wonder why children with ADHD show syntactic deficits.
– I am potentially not real.
– I could be a character in someone else’s imagination.
– What if God is not God but merely a person who is dreaming and we are all just two-dimensional characters in that dream?
– I hope the rabbit does not die this year.
– Why can’t I sleep?
– Is there something wrong with me?
– Is this insomnia or insanity?
– I hate bedtime! I hate sleeping!
– I should just stop sleeping and stay awake all night and all day.
– If life is a mirage, I should start doing drugs to live a more interesting life and then I wouldn’t have to sleep.
– I wonder what heroin feels like.
– Cocaine probably feels like being super jacked up on coffee, maybe.
– Am I sleeping?
– Is this real life?
– If I die right now, will I pick up someone else’s consciousness, like a radio signal?
– Will I become someone else?
– What is life, anyway?
– Am I asleep?
– Hello?

Tinnitus

I’ve been sick for the last week or so. I keep catching and re-catching the same cold over and over, probably due to actually living with other people in very small quarters. I was less sick when I had my own apartment. Another pro to moving out!

I am sick and I am bored. I don’t have a job and I miss school. All I do is cook and clean all day. I am a housewife without a husband. It is weird. I’ve never felt more useless in my entire life, but I think my family is quite enjoying my new maid-like qualities. Who wouldn’t like to walk in to a spotless home with dinner already cooked?

An astrologer told me that I probably won’t get a job for a while because my stars are misaligned or something. This is not the first time an astrologer has given me advice. I do not know if I believe in astrology. I am trying to be open-minded about it, but I’m skeptical, deep down. Despite my skepticism, though, hearing that my “birth chart is not strong in the area of income” made me burst into tears, thinking that I would never get a job and never go back to school and never achieve all the things I want to achieve. I am so suggestible. Some random person on the street could say something to me and it would play on my insecurities. I hate that about myself.

My mother thinks that I should chill out and put a positive spin on not having a job, i.e. I get to relax and do whatever I want and (cook and clean). My shrink thinks I should stop engaging in too much communication with my mother.

I just don’t know what I should be doing, you know? What does one do without school? Or work? I often think about writing a novel but I think that now that I actually have time to do it, I lack talent/motivation/creativity/ideas. I just feel aimless. I need a goal of some sort. I need to work towards something. I need meaning in my life, which I’m not finding. Who am I? If a person doesn’t contribute anything to society and the world-at-large, does she still exist?

It’s hard to say.

Waiting on the world to change

I don’t know what to say.

Sometimes I dread journaling. I have been doing it for a long time – since I was 8 years old – and it has always been easy. After all, what’s easier than writing about yourself and your life? But journaling is weird sometimes. I often don’t know what I’m going to write before I write it. Sometimes my feelings spill out on the page quite accidentally, and I learn something new about myself. Maybe the act of writing taps into something less conscious in my mind – I don’t know. And yet, even though I don’t know what I’ll write today, I’m dreading it. Maybe my unconscious mind is more conscious than I think.

A lot has changed in the past week. I was awarded my first graduate degree – hopefully the first, and not the last. I turned twenty-three years old, and the day passed without pomp and circumstance, which is just how I like it. (I still sometimes feel like my friends dote on me a bit too much on my birthday, which freaks out the shy girl in me, but my birthday isn’t really all about me, is it?)

But graduating and getting a year older took a toll on me. I feel unaccomplished, even with the addition of this degree. I always thought, when I was younger, that I would be so much more than I am. Instead, I am back at home with my parents and little brother, job-less, money-less, mind-less, and with 40 thousand dollars of student loans on my head. And all I can think about is how much I want to be back in school.

Tomorrow will be the first day that I will not step into a school building since I was four years old. It makes me panic to think that I am not going back to school when I am so clearly not finished. I have more to do! I want to study more! I want to do research! I want to learn! But I can’t, and that kind of sucks the big one.

I decided not to apply to Ph.D. programs this year. I wanted to prepare for the GRE properly before jumping headfirst into a whole new graduate school experience. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Now, as I sit here day after day and stare at the wall, it seems stupid. I’m trying to relax. I’m trying to not sit by the phone and wait for someone to call me about a job. I’m trying to breathe and do yoga and play guitar and read, and tell myself that it’s okay to not do something. After five years of post-secondary education with no summers off, this is weird for me.

Being at home with my family is tiring. When I was younger, I suspected that I was adopted, because I was very shy and my parents were very charming. I didn’t feel like a product of them, and I still don’t, although my own charm kicked in somewhere in the second half of high school. Although I’ve lived away from them for years, I feel more alone under their roof than I did when I lived alone. I feel… different. They make me feel different.

And so I am instantly transported back to high school, when I would hide in my room and tell myself that it’s only a couple of more years until I can move far, far away, and never come back. That’s me again. I’m back, and (I’m hoping) it’s only a couple of more years until I can move far, far away, and never come back. Maybe I should start wearing buttloads of eyeliner and hoop earrings and truly complete the transformation.

I guess all I want is to be back on track. I know, I know – things change. You never end up where you think you’re going to end up. I don’t like that. I’m flexible, but only when things are exactly how I want them. Maybe that needs to change.

I guess this is all to say that I’ve missed you. You make me feel less alone.

Brief break in hiatus to say:

You guys. My brain is totally broken. My apartment died and I had to move back home with my parents and they are INSANE. And my professor is insane. And I have to re-write a 32-page paper in a very short amount of time. And I decided to screw the GRE and just be like, whatever. Like, maybe academia isn’t for me. Maybe I’m meant to be a BROADWAY STAR (no), or a writer (maybe)! I think after I’m done this degree, I’ll just quit my prior ambitions and do nothing all day, like a crazy spinster lady. I mean, I don’t mind. I just want to be able to read some fiction without my brain exploding, you know?

BRB

Studying for the GRE and working on two very important papers. Be back lata.

xoxo
Gossip Girl

Eating, moving, and watching

As one of the steps in my quest to make life worth living, I am on a “diet”. It’s not really a “diet”, because the calorie restriction is not hugely different than before, but it’s a “diet” in the sense that I have to eat healthy. No more Taco Bell runs every time I feel the need to eat my feelings. I feel good about that, truly. I started two(? or three or four) days ago and it is going splendidly, by which I mean that I think I am in white-carb-withdrawal. When did white Minute Rice become so “delicious” (as in “deliciously time-saving and conducive to my excessively lazy [ex-]lifestyle”)?

I have also started a new exercise routine, which is really fun because before starting it, I hadn’t exercised in A MONTH! I know. I’m horrible. I quite suddenly realized that I hadn’t exercised in a long time when the elevator was out of service last week, and I had to climb four flights of stairs holding four bags of groceries. I seemed okay during the actual climbing, but when I reached my apartment, I was shocked at how certainly I thought I was dying.

It was then that I realized that I had better start working out again, and now that I’ve basically given up on school, I have more time than ever in which to exercise! It’s quite exciting.

Except, now that I’ve made this decision to eat right and exercise, I’m suddenly finding it more difficult than ever to break my unhealthy habits. I mean, I wasn’t always like this, right? At one point, eating healthy and exercising was a regular part of my life. What happened? Grad school?!? Grad school ruins everything. It’s just… are rice cakes supposed to taste good? Are smoothies supposed to be filling? Is jumping around like an 80’s workout star wearing leg-warmers supposed to feel like impending cardiac arrest?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Also this one: why does the band that supports New Directions on Glee get NO lines or anything? Without the band, New Directions would be an a capella group. In every single performance and every single competition, the band is there, playing their instruments off and rocking it. And the drum player is really hot for a child. I just think it’s unfair that they aren’t treated like actual characters of the show.

One more: WHAT HAPPENED TO DAIR, GOSSIP GIRL? If we weren’t such good friends, I think that I’d hate you.