I have had no compulsion to write for years. Some of that can be chalked up to the chaos that is life with as many overlapping spheres of interest as mine. Some of it can be attributed to avoidance. Some of it can be the impediments in my life leading up to this moment.
I think I'll leave recapping for another post. It would be a good exercise for me to review what I had last written and where it finds me now years later. But for the sake of brevity, I am still married, still a mother - now to a 10 year old and a nearly 4 year old. I still work full time, but my career took a slightly wayward slide to east of the direction I had been heading. I am emerging from a little over a year of health scares and annoyances and resultantly have been drowning in an insidious depression - stronger than it has been in a decade or longer.
When I went on Wellbutrin 15+ years ago, I attempted to describe the difference to people as not a lightening of mood so much as a lightening on my judgement. Faced with a negative situation, say something as simple as spilling a glass of water, with Wellbutrin, you would look at it and choose to be frustrated, or sigh, or even laugh it off as another example of your clumsy self. Without Wellbutrin, the situation provokes no alternatives but to see yet another reason why you cannot do anything right, why you should just give up, why you are completely worthless. It is not hyperbolic to claim that in 1998 Wellbutrin saved me - all 300 Extended release milligrams of it. The dips even the deepest since then have usually accompanied some adjustment of that dosage - going off of it for Eliot's pregnancy and post-partum nursing year, modulating it during the infertility years, and adjusting it during Auden's pregnancy. This may be the first and worst depression to hit that accompanied a standing regular dosage of 300mg. My psychiatrist has increased it to 300XLmg with a 75mg non-XL boost in the morning. It has admittedly made the daily steps from point A to point B more navigable, but the fog still permeates everything and makes the path more perilous. I started seeing my infertility therapist, Madeline, about a month ago. From what I can tell, she is approaching this on two fronts - helping me tease apart why the depression has taken hold and attempting to give me some behavioural tools to manage the unexpected anxiety attacks, the ease with which I can mentally catastrophize most situations. Fortunately, I have not sunk so far as to start sabotaging, but I can see it peaking its head over the horizon.
One relief during this has been my friendship with Keith. It is fraught with complexity that maybe complicates the situation unnecessarily, but his empathy provides a validation sometimes daily that I desperately need. Last night, I tried to explain to Sandy about the value of Keith's friendship - showed him just a snippet of an IM exchange - how it complements therapy which is partially sympathetic and partially prescriptive, but rarely empathetic. I can't tell how Sandy feels about it. Sandy does not want to be my therapist. His frustration escalates after even a single emotionally laden sentence. Yet, for him, the boys and I are all he needs. I cannot imagine that it doesn't hurt him that I spread my social needs so much thinner. In fact, at this point, I feel like my family is the last place I can share myself as I am right now. Right now they see only the slice of me that tries to hold it together.
More later. To work now.
