Maybe Not So Sick

Yesterday my head cold was still lingering, but it didn't seem bad enough to explain my bone deep fatigue. And an annoying thought began to ooze into my consciousness - what if I'm sinking into depression again? When I went to take my handful of pills last night (I swear I take more pills than my 66 year old mother), my synapses finally started to make sense of how I've been feeling.

A few months ago I felt that my Zoloft dose wasn't working as well as it had been (we addicts adjust so easily). I'd already upped the dose before and was getting dangerously close to being unable to tolerate the side effects. So instead of calling my doc, I started taking an amino acid that's supposed to increase serotonin. In a few days I was sleeping better and feeling less anxious. I ran out of those pills last weekend. And being the idiot depressive that I am, I assumed they weren't that important anyway. Then I stopped showering, stopped brushing my teeth, and starting eating chocolate chip cookies for breakfast again.

This morning I knew deep in my chest that I wasn't sick. Well, not in the I've-got-a-virus sense of sick. Unable to face the mall with a toddler in tow, I went after the hub got home tonight. I loaded up on two amino acids (one for our friend serotonin and one for epinephrine) and fish oil (recent studies are showing that this can have pretty dramatic effects on mood - of course we depressives are impressed with a few percentage points that might be in our favor).

Twenty-two years. I've been dealing with this demon for twenty-two years, and I still don't even recognize it when it comes beating down my door. After all these years I'm still in denial. Part of me still believes that I have a character flaw, that I just need to suck it up. The Bitch in my head keeps telling me I'm just a loser. I'm pretty sure she and the gerbil are in cahoots.