So, dear readers, the new antidepressant is... (insert fanfare here) Zoloft. Or rather, the generic version of Zoloft, and I never usually get the generic names into my memory, except for Levothyroxine, which I've been taking for enough years now to know. Hoping for effectiveness and lack of side effects, but not hoping with a lot of confidence. Also hoping not to need a lot of appointments, since I've just discovered that the private insurance policy I got after I left my job has everything I've been treated for previously excluded from coverage for 12 months, so it's all out of my pocket.
It's still cold here, and there's still snow on the ground, so we're having some winter after all.
At a suggestion from my therapist, I got some big plastic bins on Saturday, brought them upstairs to Jerry's Buddha bedroom office on Sunday and sorted through some things. The bins are for dividing things into categories: things that I think someone might be able to use (but not me) or that might just need to be tossed , things I can't go through right now but need to later (or have someone else do it), things I want to keep. I found a bunch of photos, including more photos taken right after we got married, of me, of Jerry holding our marriage license, a second one of the two of us, that I hadn't remembered existed.
As I drove to the mental health center to see the psychiatrist this morning, my brain had one of those fleeting thoughts that speed by and give me just enough time to realize I've had them and how insane they are. I saw the sign for my former endocrinologist - the one I gave up on when he charged me a co-pay just to have me come into his office so he could write a prescription. Jerry would sometimes be at the appointments I had with him, waiting for me in the waiting room, and as I drove by I realized that I had just thought that I should stop there, that maybe Jerry would be waiting for me in the waiting room. (I suppose if I'd remembered I could have told the psychiatrist about that, but I didn't.)
And because she just died and because she was part of the soundtrack of my 20s and because I love this song and love the exuberance with which she sings it, here's Whitney:
13 February 2012
10 February 2012
Decisions, decisions
I called and made an appointment to see the psychiatrist Monday - after lots of thought, and lots of good input from people I know and people I don't, I've decided that yes, going back on the antidepressants is the best option. The last one I was trying before I got off of them altogether was Wellbutrin, and I hadn't noticed any side effects from it, so I'll ask him about that one again.
What else? Oh, yes. Enough with the deadlines. I had a good long talk with Lynne last night and, as sometimes happens with me, it took someone outside myself to make clear to me something that I was trying not to notice: I'm not, as of February 10, 2012, ready to leave this house. I may be ready on February 11. I may be ready on March 1. I may not be ready until later than that. But trying to push myself to be ready when I'm not feeling ready has only been adding to the stress and depression, I think. I'm torn, because I want all the decisions to be made, all the actions to be taken, all the things done that will get me going into the future and whatever my new life will be, wherever it will be, and Midwest suburbia is not where I want to be - but I've lived here in this house for coming up on 12 years, it was my home with Jerry, it's so beautiful and so much his labor of love, and I can't be at peace with moving on from it until something inside me has made that decision - and I'm just not ready. Today, I'm not ready. Tomorrow I may be. Someday I will be. Yes? Yes. But that day isn't today. And I need to let myself not be ready until I'm ready. Thank you, Lynne.
I did my taxes yesterday. So that's something accomplished. A little accomplishment, but an accomplishment.
It's snowing. It's so pretty.
What else? Oh, yes. Enough with the deadlines. I had a good long talk with Lynne last night and, as sometimes happens with me, it took someone outside myself to make clear to me something that I was trying not to notice: I'm not, as of February 10, 2012, ready to leave this house. I may be ready on February 11. I may be ready on March 1. I may not be ready until later than that. But trying to push myself to be ready when I'm not feeling ready has only been adding to the stress and depression, I think. I'm torn, because I want all the decisions to be made, all the actions to be taken, all the things done that will get me going into the future and whatever my new life will be, wherever it will be, and Midwest suburbia is not where I want to be - but I've lived here in this house for coming up on 12 years, it was my home with Jerry, it's so beautiful and so much his labor of love, and I can't be at peace with moving on from it until something inside me has made that decision - and I'm just not ready. Today, I'm not ready. Tomorrow I may be. Someday I will be. Yes? Yes. But that day isn't today. And I need to let myself not be ready until I'm ready. Thank you, Lynne.
I did my taxes yesterday. So that's something accomplished. A little accomplishment, but an accomplishment.
It's snowing. It's so pretty.
09 February 2012
Stop already
STOP ALREADY WITH THE BARRAGE OF ADS IN MY INBOX FOR VALENTINE'S DAY GIFTS.
OK, that's done.
Today's plan: do my taxes. Was going to do them last week, but I got a call from the accountant at my old workplace saying she'd messed up the W2 and had to send me a new one. (This was not a surprise.) I've got it now, and am going to see if I can do my taxes the old-fashioned way, without software. This is the first year in a long time that I'll be doing the forms myself: since Jerry ran a business, he had an accountant do them for the business and for us as well. (He was the guy from whom last year I received a packet of papers with a pre-printed mailing address on the envelope - it had both our names on it, and Jerry's had been crossed out. Classy, no? No.)
OK, that's done.
Today's plan: do my taxes. Was going to do them last week, but I got a call from the accountant at my old workplace saying she'd messed up the W2 and had to send me a new one. (This was not a surprise.) I've got it now, and am going to see if I can do my taxes the old-fashioned way, without software. This is the first year in a long time that I'll be doing the forms myself: since Jerry ran a business, he had an accountant do them for the business and for us as well. (He was the guy from whom last year I received a packet of papers with a pre-printed mailing address on the envelope - it had both our names on it, and Jerry's had been crossed out. Classy, no? No.)
07 February 2012
Pharma
My therapist wants me back on antidepressants. I see her points. It's a week since I got back from my trip, and I've spent most of it unable to leave my house except to visit the mailbox. The only time I've left so far has been to go see her on Saturday. But I'm not accomplishing what I want to get done in the house, either. I went upstairs yesterday to try to tackle the bedroom that Jerry used as an office and den, and pretty soon the pile of stuff I was working on revealed photos from a colonoscopy he had in 2005 (a few benign problems, but nothing to worry about), and that was the end of that. I did find a bunch of photos of happier days, at singings, in the house, in the yard, and I find it astonishing to see how carefree and happy I look in them, how totally different I am from the stumbling, confused, shellshocked person I feel like today.
Anyway, when I first started seeing my therapist, I was already on antidepressants, and in our last session she pointed out that she'd never seen me like this before. Like what? I asked. "So emotional," she said, and she wonders if I can handle this without pharmaceutical help. It's so strange to hear that sort of thing, and other things as well, friends who say I'm more like myself now that I'm not on the medications - from inside I don't experience such vivid differences. I know I felt numbed out to a certain extent, and I don't feel that way now. I do realize that I'm not finding the motivation to do what I think I want to do, that I'm back to isolation now that I'm not going to work every day, but what the bottom line for me is, I was sad then, and I'm sad now, and just as before, it feels like this will never end. I have no experience with this kind of sadness that can help me know what will happen, that can give me hope that things will get better. I can't know if "this will pass," since the cause of it, Jerry's death, Jerry's absence, Jerry's never-coming-back, will never end. I realize that my only hope is to deal with that cause differently, to somehow manage to accept it and... what? Not continue to wish so much that it wasn't the case? Manage to get the hideous suffering he endured out of my mind and not dwell on it? Realize that countless other people have survived this loss, this final and permanent separation, and gone on? That "'tis common; all that lives must die"? I want to. I want to stop feeling like my life has ended when it hasn't. I want to be able to live, if that's what I have to do, and find happiness again.
I just have absolutely no idea if I can, if I will.
And just by the way, for those who haven't seen it: Shit People Say To Widows, via Widowed Village.
Anyway, when I first started seeing my therapist, I was already on antidepressants, and in our last session she pointed out that she'd never seen me like this before. Like what? I asked. "So emotional," she said, and she wonders if I can handle this without pharmaceutical help. It's so strange to hear that sort of thing, and other things as well, friends who say I'm more like myself now that I'm not on the medications - from inside I don't experience such vivid differences. I know I felt numbed out to a certain extent, and I don't feel that way now. I do realize that I'm not finding the motivation to do what I think I want to do, that I'm back to isolation now that I'm not going to work every day, but what the bottom line for me is, I was sad then, and I'm sad now, and just as before, it feels like this will never end. I have no experience with this kind of sadness that can help me know what will happen, that can give me hope that things will get better. I can't know if "this will pass," since the cause of it, Jerry's death, Jerry's absence, Jerry's never-coming-back, will never end. I realize that my only hope is to deal with that cause differently, to somehow manage to accept it and... what? Not continue to wish so much that it wasn't the case? Manage to get the hideous suffering he endured out of my mind and not dwell on it? Realize that countless other people have survived this loss, this final and permanent separation, and gone on? That "'tis common; all that lives must die"? I want to. I want to stop feeling like my life has ended when it hasn't. I want to be able to live, if that's what I have to do, and find happiness again.
I just have absolutely no idea if I can, if I will.
And just by the way, for those who haven't seen it: Shit People Say To Widows, via Widowed Village.
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