The constant rambling of my inner dialogue has become quiet. It feels like something inside my brain has been turned down low. The volume was at full blast since I was in my teens and for the first time in my life it’s at a bearable volume. The voice inside of me has not only quieted, but it’s changed.
Everything has changed.
My medication changed that happened in December, from Wellbutrin to Celexa – tried to kill me. This new choice of medication was chosen by a new psychiatrist who had spent a whole of an hour with me and decided that Celexa would be a good choice for me. I spent months dealing with this horrible darkness that wanted me dead and I tried convincing myself that it wasn’t the medication change that did it. That I could fix the problem on my own. I needed to be strong in my eyes, but the truth is that Celexa was harming me more than anything. I couldn’t quite come to admit that I wanted to die because my life is so good and to say outloud that I wanted to die, that the feelings of despair had come back into my life would be selfish. Greedy. Wrong. Ungrateful. I was ungrateful for all that the world and my life had given me by thinking such a thing.
What do you do when your medication and your mental illness try to kill you? You talk about it. You tell your doctor. You seek help because that is the only way to take your life back. So that’s what I did. I went and saw my family doctor and I told him that I was having dark thoughts. He upped my dosage of Celexa from 10mg to 20mg. I wanted to believe this would help. I tried so hard to trust it would work. But it didn’t. I waited almost two more months before I finally went back to see him and told him I couldn’t do it anymore. Something needs to be done. We talked for a bit and he told me that the prescription that the psychiatrist had prescribed me was a very old medication and he was suprised that she even prescribed it to me. There was a newer version of this medication called Cipralex and that’s what he would be prescribing me.
I was hopeful that this new medication would bring the life back to me. I gave it a chance and it’s only been a month and a half and I am a new person. Every inch of my brain feels new and hopeful about my future. I finally feel like I have some sort of balance inside of me.
The rambling has stopped though, and this is upsetting because I miss writing. I miss pulling out my phone or my computer to update this blog with all the mess that is happening inside of me. It feels like the only times I can write is when I am in a state of mind that somehow appears to be a mix of mania and depression both at the same time. I know that doesn’t make sense, but somewhere in the back of my head I am nodding at the thought.
With my new casual position as an outreach worker at the company that I did my last practicum at, I have a code of ethics that I must abide to. As a future I social worker I have a code of ethics that have become my life. There are things I see that I cannot talk about. There are people I see that I have to hold onto their secrets. There are so many thoughts in my head that I have to tuck away and hold onto and this new way of living and learning is so much different from the way I have spent the last three years of my life. No more secrets in my own life, and now I am having to learn about the art of keeping secrets.
I have so much to learn still, and I am so thankful that I have become hopeful and teachable once again. I didn’t let my mental illness kill me and this is a huge victory for me.
Becoming Brave 