Down

I should know by now not to talk to my Mom when I'm in a depressive slump - she always knows just how to remind me that every decision I have made, probably since I decided to draw my first breath, has been the wrong one.  It was bad enough before I talked to her; now I've completely lost faith in my ability to make a simple meal - the apartment reeks of onions and probably everything is going to taste foul and people are going to despise me for serving substandard food.  I hate my life.

Happy holiday, indeed.  

A Moment of Clarity

Today feels like a good day. I took a sleeping pill last night, so managed a full eight hours, and woke up without any significant anxiety. I have things to do today, and I feel as if I have the mental ability to get through them as long as I don't let myself get overwhelmed.

I don't have anything special scheduled for tonight, so I'm going to spend the free time watching movies, I think. Take it easy. The last few weeks have been rough.

I realize that I am in the process of becoming myself. For a brief moment (for I am sure I will forget this when the clouds cover my mind again) I can see clearly what I want to be when the drugs are gone and there is nothing left but what I carry in my soul. It's harder to explain than I thought it would be - I see it clearly in my mind's eye but words fail me.

I'm glad that I'm tapering during the winter; it feels fitting that I should be healing during the dark days and will be clean when spring returns and brings renewal. I hope that I will be renewed at the same time.

Deeper

It seems I am not destined to simply lay down and die; something keeps fighting to keep me alive, so I will follow it and see where it leads.  I must admit that I don't have much faith in these urges - every decision I make is pointed out to me as being the absolute worst one I could make, and it's true it seems every time I make a change I fall further into the abyss that is my life.  Maybe it's just depression from the withdrawal that is clouding me, but I just don't know what the right thing to do is anymore.

I can't really afford it, but I'm going to take in one of my cats sooner than expected.  Perhaps having something living here will inspire me to live as well.  Caring for it will take up what little money I had spare next month, but I think it will be worth it.

If I can pull myself together for a few hours, maybe I will go to the pool and get some sun.

Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

I never thought I would see the day when I would find not one but two books that I could not get into enough to get past the first few pages. I think, in my whole life, this has only happened with one book ever (and it was a really bad, pretentious book - I brought it for light reading on a cruise and I deliberately left it in my stateroom because I didn't want to haul it back.)

Both books are new releases, and highly recommended, so I'm not sure why I can't read them. I'm only listing them here because I know that the books can't be bad and that I'm going to want to revisit them; "Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You In All The Confusion" by Johan Harstad, and "Damascus" by Josha Mohr.

It simply can't be the books that are the problem; it has to be me. Benzo withdrawal must be affecting my mental state more than I thought it would, and if it is going to rob me of my love of books I'm simply not sure how I'm going to make it through the next year - for the most part my reading habit is all I have to keep me sane.

More Difficult Than Imagined

I need to pull together every bit of strength I have now, for I am doing something more difficult than I have ever attempted.

For most of my adult life, I have struggled with depression. Doctors have put their faith in chemicals, which had side effects, than gave me more chemicals to counteract those effects. In the end, nothing helped with the depression, and in addition I was left with a physical dependency on benzodiazepine type drugs. Benzodiazepines are ridiculously addictive, and very difficult to ween off of. Going off of them cold turkey can kill you.

At my insistence my doctor has put me on a tapering program to ween me off of the drug. I started just over a week ago, and cannot recall a time when I have felt so bad for so long in my life. Withdrawal pains started within two days, and will not end for at least six months after I take my final dose and possibly as long as twenty-four months after. There is no way to know.

I am tapering faster than I should; I should only be dropping 1mg a week, but because the pharmacy would not fill my new prescription yet I had to use the pills I had on hand, which meant a drop of 2.5mg in my first week. I don't know if that contributed to the pain of this week, but I had no seizures so that is a good thing. Next week I have to do another larger drop; 1.5mg, then after that I should be able to taper at 1mg a week as was planned.

I'm terribly afraid. I have signed up for an online support group, but do not have a strong support system in my real life. Overcoming a dependency, which really is just a prettier name for a drug addiction, is one of the hardest things a person can do, and I'm doing it alone. In times like this I can only turn to God for strength, and who can know if he will help me.

A bit from the master....

. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.

For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . .

- an excerpt from Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis"