The Inexorable Day
That Other Me is a series that explores the immediacy and intimacy of various mental health episodes I’ve experienced throughout my life.
2000
Awake.
A blissful moment of nothing.
Then …
A thick, soggy, oily mess sitting in my head, clogging all rational thinking.
The anxiety simmering, like some foul concoction ready to overflow.
The aberrant thoughts that have nothing to do with reality.
And then …
Then …
An acknowledgement of time.
Of just how much of the day there is to survive.
Because each hour, each minute, each second, is implicit with the danger that this is going to get worse.
And worse might just become worst.
I haul myself out of bed. Trudge into the kitchen. Force a cardboard breakfast down. Shower mechanically. Dress like I’m pulling on lead.
Check the time. Check the time. Check the time.
Check. The. Time.
Hoping that I’ve taken a big chunk out of the day, but find it’s barely been half an hour.
The night is the finish line.
The night brings relief.
Escape.
The psych has given me meds. The Xanax does little more than blunt everything going through my head – but a blunt knife can still stab and wound and injure mortally. The sedative isn’t a cure. It’s not even a bandage, because a bandage is protective cover that allows the wound to heal.
The sedative is a temporary façade.
Hey, you’re not as fucked as you think … until you do.
My GP has recommended taking four lots of two milligrams a day – ten milligrams is overdose territory, he told me. The dosage he’s suggested is aimed at making life tolerable enough until the antidepressants get to work.
These ones are new. Not tricyclics, which are the old brand of antidepressants, but SSRIs. My psych has told me they are especially good for anxiety. That has given me hope – at least on one level. On another, I feel like a failure. Back on antidepressants for the third time in twelve years.
How do I keep ending up back here?
Why is my mind melting down cyclically?
And fucking pills.
Pills.
Fucking pills.
I know, from experience, it’ll be at least a week before I feel any of the benefits from the antidepressants, and it’ll take 4 – 6 weeks before my brain (and body) learn to regulate what they’re doing and stabilize their effects.
So I take my Xanax.
I take my Xanax and surrender to them seducing me into drowsiness that leads to this drug-induced sleep, which is the only place I can find sanctuary, although the sanctuary might be the ruins that provide just enough cover to hide behind. But as I begin to rouse again, it’s with regret. I don’t want to rouse. I don’t want to leave my ruins. I imagine this is why suicide is such an attractive option – because nothing else seems to work.
There’s no easing back into the world, back into the life; it’s like being born through a vaginal tunnel of shredded glass.
And then …
Then … it’s about counting down to the next lot of Xanax.
This is no way to live, but it’s the only way to live right now.
Once night nears, I feel some relief – just a little bit more and I can lose myself in sleep.
As much as I loathe the antidepressants, I also accept that they’re my only recourse. I’ve tried to do it on my own, tried to cling to what many would consider normalcy, but I just can’t do it. I want to. But it’s not working for me.
My brain doesn’t seem wired that way.
If it ever was.