Alive

I talked with my psychiatrist about the ineffectiveness of the medications I've been taking. How where I am today is not where I was a year ago, nor a year and a half ago, or even two years ago. Things have changed. I'm no longer so anxiety ridden that every sound and noise outside sets me into a panic. I don't think about walking from my car to my house or vice versa and wonder if I'm going to be attacked. The hypervigilance simply isn't there to such an extreme anymore.

So I am titrating off of Cymbalta as it never really did much good for me. The list of side effects of withdrawal are numerous and I've experienced at least half of them. I was on 80 mg; now on 60mg until Saturday. Then 40, 30, 20mg for 2 weeks each. It's a slow process. And if 60 to 40 is too much, I was given enough meds to do 50mg for 2 weeks to ease the process.

After that, I will be slowly coming down from 2mg of klonopin a day. We're not really sure where that's going to go. Maybe I only need 1mg, split into half mg in the morning and night. Maybe I need something more like Ativan, which I've taken before. It's on an as needed basis.

I'm also more recently on Tegretol. 200mg left me a complete zombie. 100mg seems okay. I don't think it's the solution we're looking for, but it's really too soon to know how it's affecting my system. I've only been taking it for about a month now. And coming off of Cymbalta actually opens a lot more doors to try other meds. Cymbalta interacts severely with almost everything.

The game plan is to see what my new baseline is in the present. Everyone thinks this is a good idea. I also don't do well on long term medications. By long term, I mean something that I need to take for a few weeks. My body tends to reject whatever I'm taking after a while. I'm not surprised by the increased muscle aches, pulled muscles, migraines, hypersomnia, mood swings. My brain was going, "NO"

Even with all the current side effects, I can think again. I watched a comedy special. Fluffy! I haven't laughed that hard in...I honestly do not know when. It was a completely free and open laughter. I may have been a child the last time I laughed like that. I was startling myself, let alone freaking out my cats lol!

I can feel again. It's like breathing after drowning. My emotions had been so regulated for me that I'm relearning how to do that. It's like a dam broke inside of me and everything that had been trying to spill out, I can finally FEEL.

There's a lot to that. Not all of it good. There's a lot I never held people accountable for, and I have to decide whether it's worth bringing up now with the arguments, or letting it go as I did in the past. But that's a story for another time.

For now, it's enough to be closer to who I was/am before people and depression tried to destroy me.

Remedies?

For the last year, I've been on medications. To help with anxiety. Depression. Muscle tightness and spasms. Migraines. Fibromyalgia. A new one is a steroid that helps the body retain water, salt, and other necessary minerals because of fainting spells I've had my whole life that have recently become severe enough for me to see a cardiologist.

I've never mentioned my age before, but I'm under 30. Nearer to it, but under.

My current doctors/medical professionals are a PCP, neurologist, chiropractor, therapist, cardiologist, and a psychiatrist. I've seen one rheumatologist already, but I'll likely end up seeing another one. I have a foot that is slowly collapsing on me. The bones are fine. The muscles are starting to atrophy. I see signs of it beginning in the other foot too.

I have nerves in my body that currently don't respond to stimulation. Given that my neurologist doesn't say anything when I tell him this, I guess it's par for the course of where my fibro is at. Nerves that go off like electrical shocks, to no stimuli at all.

I didn't stop writing simply because Steve and I broke up. My health was deteriorating, physically and mentally. The things I had to say didn't belong here, or I didn't have the strength to write about them. I didn't want him reading my spiral downward. May the gods help me, I didn't think it was possible, but I hid it from him.

I was hiding enough and he didn't want to see anymore. It was the perfect combination. And there was one day that tipped the tides. It's why I'm on meds and seeing a psychiatrist. There was self harm, but there was no rush of endorphins. I was still panicky and scared. It took me an hour to decide to drive to an urgent care.

I had lost Chris, who always made me promise to tell someone...long before Steve did. I know I talk about Steve a lot, but I mourn the loss of Chris in my life. I miss him so much. But he's hurting, like I'm hurting. I can't blame him for not being able to look at me without being in pain. I understand that all too well. It hurts me too because I do love Chris. But not his anger and mood swings.

I had lost Steve...and well, yeah.

That day could have ended two ways. I could have done what I did, and gotten help. Or it would have set me on the path that was in my mind. I had a plan. I wasn't going to see the end of 2015. I was already thinking about it as of August '14. That day was March 7, 2015.

It's been a year and I wish I could say the meds have helped. They haven't. I have to talk with my psychiatrist on Tuesday about options, mainly starting over and seeing what happens. Where I was a year ago is not where I am today. I need to know what I'm working with, not drugged up.

Steve saw it the other night when we did a double date with him and his new gf. Writing isn't too badly impaired, though I'm making a ton of easy spelling mistakes so thankfully there's that nice dictionary. Speaking and being awake on the other hand?? I've had music on fairly loud this entire time. It's so I can concentrate and stay alert enough to write. And I feel myself fading quickly as it's approaching 9PM. That's when I start to fade, no matter if I've taken a nap or not.

I did take an over 2 hour nap today too. I got over 9 hours of sleep. Hypersomia. It's caused by the meds I'm on. That's also why I want to start over. A clean slate to see what I really need because I'm taking too much of something or several somethings obviously.

But I didn't want to talk about all of this, ya know? I felt like it was necessary for me and for the people who do still read here.

Paths

I was conditioned to forgive people's wrongs against me from an early age. I knew what they were doing was wrong, but at some point I just got tired. It became easier to brush things aside in my mind than confront them. That's what I did with Steve and how things ended.

Too tired of being hurt, being betrayed, being left, no longer being good enough. Just tired.

And after everything with the Ex...to finally be free. After all that man did to me, all the things he did to screw me up. All the ways I was tired of having my limits of existing pushed. To be free. I got the call on May 28, 2014 around 10-11pm that he wouldn't be a problem anymore.

I had ten days with Steve, with finally nothing hanging over us. June 8th, that's when he ended things. It was a Sunday. We met on a Sunday, July 15th. He ended things 4 days before his birthday. Since he doesn't celebrate it, I don't think it even occurred to him.

Or how he always went out of town, back to his old college for homecoming, on my birthday every year. How much that hurt and I never said anything because of conditioning. My birthday has always sucked so why would the man I love be around? No, that was very fitting, and he wouldn't have stayed if I had asked anyway. That's why I never did.

So why am I crying from missing him? Why is my heart still breaking?

Because for everything that may have been wrong, or didn't mesh, or hurt...regardless of all that, it was different than every relationship I've ever had. He was my best friend, my protector, my lover, my Dom. He was the sun in the rain, the Light in the Dark. He made me smile when I didn't think I could. His was the footprint on the Path that I knew was always there.

Until he took a different Path.