Anti-depressants

So that leads us onto the anti-depressants. I've really wanted to write and explore the effects they've had on me. After the first few weeks of side-effects and feeling awful they settled down. I think the first difference I noticed was when I decided to call my sister and ask her about the panic attacks she had had when she was younger. I knew they had happened but never the details. My family has always been fairly distant to each other. We talk to Mum and she tells us what's going on but that's it. She has been the hub of it all so we are never close. I decided to break that and stop holding back and phone my sister. It's probably the first time we've talked properly in as long as I can remember. It was good. I learnt a lot about what she had gone through and was honest about what I was going through. I could see a lot of similarities in the causes behind her problems, even though the way they came out was very different.

Anxiety. Obsessive compulsive behaviour. Social anxiety and having difficulty with close relationships. Overthinking and worrying things. Analysing situations, conversations to the point you would just not have them as you would be paralysed. She then exhibited panic attacks and agoraphobia. Mine came out in different ways, but the same basic feelings seemed to be underneath. I started thinking then of my brother, how he stressed at work to the point of being unbearable. How he's happier now being a househusband but has no friends or relationships outside the family. The way I watched him sit biting his nails anxiously when they were trying to buy their new house when I was over there. The tension in him clearly visible. I guess I've always looked upto my brother and sister and always assumed they were "ok" and it was just me that struggled. This was the first time I'd seen it as a family thing. It was comforting, to know it wasn't just me... and honestly, it made me look how far I've come and think wow, I haven't done too badly. I know I don't have any close friends I see face to face but... I am well respected at work. I have a very responsible job. I make decisions at work which effect others. I've started over from scratch and have started to discover "me" and not "her husband". I've accepted things about myself. I have a number of good dear friends who while they happen to be mainly a fair distance away... care about me deeply and genuinely and will reach out and support me. I've done pretty well really when I think about the way things have affected us. It doesn't matter to me if it's nature or nurture thats caused this anxiety in my family. Was it Mum being overprotective and coddling us? Is it a chemical thing? It doesn't matter. It is however a fact... and It made me feel a lot more positive about the anti-depressants. There is a problem to be addressed and it is not just that I could not cope.
So I started being open and honest about the medication. Not hiding it and being ashamed. I joke about it at work, I don't hide it. If I can in the slightest take away some of the perceived stigma of depression then good! People have helped me enough, I would like to give something back.

Then I went to Amsterdam with my Landlady. That was a pretty worrying week anyway not knowing what was wrong with her. I tend to dislike places I am not familiar with, especially if they are not English. The same tenseness and anxiety. This time though I loved it. Yes, I still got nervous about things but... Not to the same extent. It was at a level I could handle and either give into it or push past it. I could enjoy things. I did enjoy it. I didn't sit anxiously worrying over doing things. I didn't waste the time getting uptight over the fact I would have to say good bye to my Landlady friend. I just... enjoyed those moments. Even leaving her at the airport, with a hug and a smile while it made me sad, it made me still glad of the chance we had had.

Coming home to the UK. Coming back to that email which was so unexpected, to know something which had been so much a part of my life was changed forever. I sat on the coach and cried... and reached out. It hurt so badly but the first thing I did was reach out for someone. It was a hard few days, and it hurt so badly... but it hurt. It didn't send me spiralling into depression or the blackness. It didn't send me inwards hiding away. It didn't send me into myself to hurt myself. It just hurt as grief is supposed to.
I've had some bad days and weekends over the last few weeks yes but, they are just that. Bad days, being pissed off, exhausted or work getting to me. They haven't gone to the same depths though. They haven't got blown out of proportion and led me to the hurtful dark places where it stops being about a bad day and becomes about everything else, all the past things which come up, all the old patterns of thinking.

I still get anxious but, its controllable. It doesn't paralyse me into indecision. Now its down to the choices I make. I can let it get to me and stop, or I can keep going. That paralysing fear leading to inaction was a killer. Then you blame yourself for it afterwards.
I don't worry about things so much before they happen. Just deal with them as they come. Don't think about things I have done so much. Don't reply conversations. Just let it go.
I don't feel as driven. Yes. A good word. I've always felt driven to the extent of compulsion and not quite feeling in control at times. That's gone now. Still little hints of it but... managable.
Sexually... I'll admit I probably was overly sexual (strange for someone who has only ever as much as kissed one woman), but I think the whole being driven thing led to a hypersexuality which was NOT good for me and left me very confused and frustrated. Again, it's just sufficiently muted now to be a comfortable part of me. Part of me yes, but not something which controls or drives me. Everything in more of a balanced place.

That's the two things I'd say most. It's given me space in my thoughts to stop them spinning round and around and it's given me more balance.

I feel more relaxed. I feel more... sociable. More able to just speak first and then think about it after. A few situations have come up where I could offer someone a hand in the street. Helping someone on a train with a case. Offer a hand to a guy with a bad leg put out his trash. Normal situations yes but ones I would have just gone over and over in my head before to the point of not helping, then cursed and kicked myself for it. Now though I could offer a hand and just smile afterwards. This is more like the me I felt like and could never understand WHY i couldn't be like that as it's how I felt inside.

I think that's it. For the first time in my life I feel like the me I always thought I should have been but was frustrated at not being. There are possibilities now.

Yes... the dizziness I get sometimes isn't good, nor the insomnia... but I wouldn't look back now for the world.