I’m really scared
but I don’t want to be
and I was trying to just hold on and hope that this would stabilise after a bit, after the dose reduction on Sunday
but I don’t think I can
it is clear that I have passed some kind of threshold in the medication and I am not handling this
and it’s terrifying to me to admit this to you all because the overwhelming dread in me tells me not to because you will think I’m .. pick any negative word really, and that works.
there is still a little bit of rational mind in there that tells me that’s not right and I need to try to trust you all to help me and not be disgusted by me. well. I hope this is the rational part, and not the other part.
so I’m doing the opposite to what feels like the smart thing to do and telling you and asking you to please help me and please be patient with me and please not let me lose myself to this darkness
because I don’t think there’s an immediate fix. I am obviously feeling this way because I have been decreasing the amount of Efexor over the last 3 months in the hope I will learn to sleep again, and I have reached a tipping point in the depression side of it where I can tell that I actually need the drugs to balance some shit in my brain so that I can actually experience life the way I want to. but I can’t just start taking the Efexor again and be fine, because the lack of proper sleep was .. well, is.. also really fucking me up. and I haven’t felt any improvement in my sleep quality, so the Efexor needs to keep decreasing.
but I have other fears too. what if I get all the way to zero on Efexor and I still can’t sleep properly. what if that ends up being another incorrect theory and all of this was for nothing.
what if I try other medicines and they don’t work or they have side effects? I know you can’t always avoid side effects but I just need to find some that I can live with and tolerate. and even if I do try other medicines they don’t usually work immediately. maybe I will be a little better off in that regard because I do have the Efexor still and that is already doing part of the job and something else can just pick up the slack and slowly build to doing the whole job as I continue to decrease the Efexor.
I don’t want to keep living like this and I am doing this to try to be better. more clear minded. more energetic. maybe even less pain. I don’t know if I am doing the right things or if I am just going to make more problems. I thought I was doing the right thing taking this medicine for so long like they told me to do. it scares me a little bit that I don’t think anyone actually really knows “the right thing” because I don’t think there is one single right thing and even the doctors are just giving their best guesses.
but I am trying to do something and I hope that me trying is enough and that if I fall further into this darkness you will help me keep trying until something makes a difference. it’s really scary to acknowledge that I need to change things and try something new and to know that things might get worse before they get better and know that means I need to trust the people I love to keep me moving forward when the overwhelming feeling inside me tells me that I am not worthy of you all and the much safer thing would be to try to pretend I am fine and not give anyone reason to doubt me or get frustrated with me. it tells me that by doing this I am just giving you the reasons you need to see that I’m a waste of time.
that feeling is so loud and overwhelming right now. I can only push it away for short bursts.
and i’m just really fucking tired of always having to push it away and so I’m saying to that depression and disease.. fine. prove it. either way, it will be proved right and I won’t need to bother trying to counter it all the time or the sliver of hope in here that keeps trying to tell me it’s wrong will be proven right.
but I’m tired of fighting and tired of being scared and just begging you please to tell me that it is worth it. I am worth it? I need you to tell me you believe in me and want me to keep trying and push through and get better because you want me and need me. because Ive run out of believe in myself at the moment.
fear
backwards
This afternoon I stupidly reversed into another car as I was leaving kinder after I collected Abigail. I was about to pull away from the curb, I wasn’t going very fast, but there was a bump. The other person’s number plate got a decent dent in it from our towbar thing. Their bumper has a small dent. My car is fine, since it was only the towbar that touched the other car.
My head, not so much. Driving and cars have the potential to make me very anxious. When I do something stupid like reversing into someone, that potential is realised. Even if I am trying to park somewhere and misjudge or something and then have to back up and come at it again, and there are people waiting to go past me, I just get really flustered and that just makes it even harder to do what I am trying to do. The parking in front of Stephanie’s school is parallel parking which you have to reverse into. Yes, this is generally one of the more difficult types of parking to do. But that knowledge doesn’t make me feel better when I have misaligned myself the first time around and backed into the space only to have half the car sticking out into the road still. Trying to go back forwards and fix it doesn’t work because there are usually other cars waiting to drive past you, there are other parents standing around outside the school staring at you while they hold their idle chit-chats. If I miss it the first time I have more than once just driven straight back out and gone around the block to let the people forget about me and come back able to start fresh.
This kind of paranoia isn’t restricted to driving type issues and situations, I just have it particularly intensely in those kind of situations.
Before I learned to drive I wouldn’t have thought that I had any psychological problems with cars and driving. Maybe not.. before I learned to drive. Maybe it would be better to say before I was old enough to learn to drive. If you aren’t old enough to drive then no one expects you to. Once you are old enough to drive, everyone assumes that you have a license. Once I started trying to learn to drive I think it woke up some kind of suppressed fear in me, about making mistakes, or having an accident. Or hurting someone. One would assume that these worries stem from having been injured myself in a fatal car accident. I don’t know if there is any way to fix this problem in myself. Other than not driving, of course, which is really not a practical option.
Driving is something that normal people do and I have become aware or been made aware of how I am sub-normal in so many ways that any mistake in a driving related situation makes me feel stupid and useless and so very very not right. Not right in the way that a serial killer is not right, not not right in the way that someone who wears tea-cozies on their head is not right. I try to escape that conditioning and sometimes I’m quite good at it. Sometimes I have a bad day though and I hear the voice and see the face that shows disgust and disdain at my flaws and I can’t help but to feel those same things for myself.