. . . and it didn't work out quite like I'd hoped it would.
You see, a couple of weeks ago I saw our GP (Family Doctor) because I'd slipped on our stairs and fell on my back down half of them. From a series of falls I had growing up the mid-section of my spine is compressed and the most recent fall exacerbated the old injury causing me a lot of pain that ibuprofen (Advil) and paracetamol (Tylenol) just weren't handling.
Only, I didn't leave the doctor's office with only the prescription for painkillers I was expecting. No, that would have been too simple. Instead I found myself with a prescription for painkillers and a prescription for antidepressants.
Yes, that's right, antidepressants. Somehow our GP who I've actually only seen once before was able to recognize in the fifteen to twenty minutes that he talked to me and examined my painful back, something which I'd failed to. Mostly because it's the thing I most wanted not to see.
During the third year of the electrical engineering degree I never finished, a series of events happened in my life that changed me, no, broke me. To be honest I'm not sure I've ever completely come to terms/made peace with all that happened.
I left university, very much not okay, and went home to my parents house where I tried to recover. It's here that I'm not sure what happened, what went wrong. I was depressed and I sought help.
I ended up talking my way into a diagnosis of bipolar/manic depressive, probably because for many reasons it's an illness that I know a great deal about.
I spent the roughly the next two years on various combinations of four different medications just trying to feel like myself again. There are times when I would have settled for simple being able to feel anything at all.
During that time, I failed at or gave up on so many things that had been important to me before. To this day I still don’t know why. Recently, in looking forward and planning my future, I’ve been forced to confront what I didn’t do during that time – the courses I didn’t complete – the year I wasted.
And my emotions have overwhelmed me once again.
Most of the time, when my thoughts drift to what seem like my lost years, I draw some peace from knowing that if I hadn’t gone through all that I had, I wouldn’t have been working at the summer camp where I met my husband. I love my husband and my son and would not trade them for anything.
But lately, thoughts of my lost years, leave me feeling anxious and concerned about the years to come. I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to feel like I’ve failed to that extent ever again. Mostly it’s concern over how this antidepressant will affect me.
You see, most of the time, I like me and I don’t want to lose myself again.
So with the weight of all of this very much on my shoulders, I avoided blogging for awhile, only to realize that blogging is one of the things that keeps me sane.
Thanks for reading my ramblings as I said what I needed to say!
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