Wake up, wake up, wake up it’s the 1st of the month
I remember the BFF and I used to sing “It’s that time of the month…”
Which for me, today… it’s both.
Which I wouldn’t normally share. But it’s not good news and is going to really jack my family for the next week.
We weren’t trying to get prego or anything–I’ve been a happy pill taker for a while now. And lately I’ve been a constant pill taker to avoid my period and the emotional meltdowns that come with it.
My period didn’t used to be this bad. But when you get on multiple meds, things get strangely dependent on each other. At least for me.
It used to be that “my monthly visit” just meant intense chocolate cravings. Maybe a tear or two at a car commercial.
But then I got on prozac. It was last year during the whole mother-in-law-dying-of-cancer time and I was just getting nonfunctional. Like, drive to work, cry in front of the school for 20 minutes, then drive home and call in sick.
And the worst part was not being able to enjoy my kiddo. Like ever. And he’s a sweet kid. He’s not actually THAT challenging. But I could never play with him. I’d lie around. Often crying. He spent more time comforting me than I did him.
Or worse, I’d be holding my feelings in for the sake of the hubby and then just treat the kid in a really cold, distant manner. Or an angry manner if I’m going to be brutally honest. I started yelling at him. For nothing.
So Prozac it was.
And it eventually leveled my moods some. It helped me be the calm one for the family. It helped me be the leader.
But somewhere in there, it was time for the sugar pills in my birth control pack. And I didn’t get the chocolate cravings. Or the tears. And I was all, “Yay. This shit is amazing!”
But then the next week came. And it was not amazing. It was grumpy, grouchy, anxious, panic attacks.
My body was not having it. It had managed to find a nice balance between my innate lack of serotonin, the Prozac, and my birth control hormones. And then my period ruined it. Goodbye hormones, goodbye happiness.
Yes, it took two medications, two chemical adjustments, to make me feel normal. And that feels very wrong and embarrassing.
But it was an easy choice. No more periods. My lady doctor agreed, got me a new RX sans sugar pills, and I never looked back.
Except that I am HORRIBLE with keeping on top of shit. I mean, if my husband wasn’t paying the bills, I would probably be writing this with my own blood on a leaf due to lack of electricity or a home.
Ok, I’m not that bad. But I am often late about… everything. Paying bills. Scheduling doctor’s appointments. Reordering medications…
Which is how I find myself in my current predicament. I didn’t realize I was running out of birth control, but I’m out. And I’m having to wait for doctor approval for a refill since the whole RX is out since I am overdue for my annual exam.
I am an infantile idiot. It is amazing I am a mother, responsible for caring for another human, because I sure can’t care for myself.
Which brings me back to the point of this blog.
When people ask me what I am writing about, or why I quit my job, I say “getting healthy”. And I think they often have the impression I quit because I have some mildly serious physical ailment. Which I sometimes feel is true. Being overweight and so dreadfully out of shape starts to feel like an ailment.
But really, getting healthy probably means, in huge part, fixing my brain so I can get off the Prozac. It means finding a counselor and working out my shit. It means learning to be kinder to myself and not always beating myself up, like for that one time five years ago, when I put my foot in my mouth at a party. Ok. It was five days ago. But still.
It means learning to enjoy life and not always inventing shit to worry about.
Because I CAN’T be this dependent on meds to hold me together. One, it seems unnatural and god knows what the long term side effects will be of putting weird, mood altering chemicals in my body. And it’s not even pot, so I can’t make myself feel better about it by saying “it’s natural, it’s from the earth.” No. It’s in a little pill and comes from some laboratory that has had recalls on their products.
Two, I am clearly a dingbat and this is just too much for me to keep track of. I even have one of those old-people weekly pill boxes and can’t keep this shit straight. So I am just not responsible enough to handle my drugs.
But really, I just want to feel healthy. And maybe it’s social stigma, but I just don’t feel healthy knowing I’m on Prozac.
It took forever for me to agree to get on it because of this stigma. Which sucks. Because I clearly needed help and I just made myself and my family suffer way longer than they needed to.
Wanna know what finally convinced me to put mind altering drugs in my body?
A kindergartner.
The year of the dying mother-in-law, I had a student named M who was super ADHD. Like, uncontrollable. Unbearable. He couldn’t do shit in school. He hid in closets, ran around the room, touched people. Not inappropriately or anything. But it really seemed like he was on speed and X all at the same time. Manically rubbing people’s arms and heads.
Now he wasn’t always like this–he sometimes had meds. And my realization of the power, the necessity, of helping yourself with meds happened in a five minute walk down the hall.
One day, as I picked up my kindergarten group for reading intervention, M was being so… M. Just touching, dancing, skipping down the hall. Rubbing the wall if he couldn’t find a human to rub. It was nuts. And I was grimacing and screaming in my head about what a horrible teaching session I was about to have.
But we got to the room, took our seats, and M looked up at me quietly. He raised his hand to answer my question. He listened when someone else had their turn to answer.
His meds had kicked in.
And it was life-changing. For him, but also for me. All of a sudden I saw how much I was standing in my own way. Meds truly helped M perform and learn at school. What if meds could help me perform at life?
And they have.
I really, really wish our society could get over this whole mental health being too hard to talk about thing. Because there’s help out there for people who are hurting. And why would we want it to be hard for people to ask for help? You would fight cancer. You would take medication for your high blood pressure. So why is it so hard to ask for an antidepressant?
Why am I still so uncomfortable taking one when I know the good it has done for me and my family?
And I think society has to answer that, not just me.
But in the meantime, I want to work towards more permanent solutions for myself. Work towards changing some of my habits in how I view the world and myself in it. In how I treat myself when I make mistakes or am learning something new.
And there’s that word again. Habits.
Perhaps I can become whoever I want to be, if I just practice enough.