“I feel like you’re getting better when I’m not around.”
I’d already figured it out a few minutes ago. “You’re breaking up with me.”
She’d decided, but she struggled as her eyes spilled over. “I think so.”
I nodded – it made sense. It was a logical decision. “Okay. That’s okay.”
She put her arms around me, trapping mine at my sides. “I love you so much. I want to know you’ll be alright.”
“I’m fine.”
I wondered what to have for lunch now that I’d be having it alone, but remembered to awkwardly put my hand on her shoulder – it’s what a person would do. After fifteen minutes of sniffling, she let go. The eyeliner smeared all over her face bothered me – If she knew she’d cry, why even bother wearing it? “Should I go?”
“It’d be weird if you didn’t.”
She later called my reaction mature, which has since become my yardstick for what seems to be a popular view of the defining characteristics of adulthood – stoicism and emotional dysfunction. I’ve tried plenty of poisons to try and make myself feel normal, but the only one that damaged me in a lasting way was prescribed by a doctor.
The moment I chose to seek help for my various neuroses came in a strange moment of mental clarity. It was right after I finished preparing the various instruments of my own suicide. At that point I realised the way I’d planned hanging myself was impossible, due to the fact my new bedroom lacked a ceiling fan or anything else to tie the sheet to. Until then, I’d been dealing with the problem in an adult way – by not letting anyone know the extent of it in the hope that it would disappear on its own. On Facebook, I type only in lowercase without any punctuation to look more accessible. Pretending not to care about anything at all had become my baseline, at least until medication took away its dramatic aspect. Only a few noticed the symptoms of a deeper mental illness – missed parties, staying in bed too long, avoidance of showers – those kinds of things.
Only my therapist knew that I lived every second like a four year old who’s just discovered that they’ll die one day.
My first prescription sat on my desk for weeks. The list of potential side-effects acted as a mental paperweight until I finally built up the courage to walk to the pharmacy across the road and get it filled. In the same way you learn a new word and begin to hear it everywhere, the global conversation surrounding anti-depressant use suddenly became overwhelmingly prominent. It made me feel like an idiot for even considering it to be a viable option. Self-medicating was unnatural and poisonous – there’s extremely vocal anti-medication advocates out there who are adamant that they didn’t need a pill to feel okay when they were my age. They say when they were sad, they just played outside instead of watching television and everything worked out fine. They cite dubious research about the efficiency of placebos. They say taking medication instead of pulling up your socks and dealing with the nightmare of being alive is the easy way out. Being depressed or anxious isn’t a sickness to these people – it’s just a part of life that everyone experiences.
Dependancy isn’t easy. A lot of the misinformation I’d read and heard disparagingly referred to anti-depressants as ‘happy pills’. This idea definitely comes from the perspective of people who’ve never used them. Anti-depressants don’t make you happy, they just replace a problem that impeded your ability to function with one that’s easier to manage. When I was finally convinced to give the pills a go, I spent the next few days in bed slipping in and out of a nausea-filled fugue state, and when I finally came out of it, I could tell that a chemical imbalance in my brain had shifted – but not necessarily in a way that righted it completely.
Instead of spending each moment with existential dread clinging to me like oil, I suddenly felt like I was standing on the bottom of the ocean. It’s cold, dark, soundless, safe. There’s not enough light to see anything, which means the things that ruined you before might as well be invisible – but all the treasures that litter the seafloor are in the dark too. All the things that had paralysed me for over a year were inconveniences – I no longer feared death, loneliness, responsibility – but everything that brought me joy before fell on my head like dust.
When everything feels the same, you’re invincible. No bad idea is without merit, no tragedy crippling. I watched my family’s relationship deteriorate over the course of a month to the point where none of them were on speaking terms and all were living in separate homes. I felt little. Every shouting match sounded like a pedestal fan humming in my ear. Then, when the girlfriend I’d been living with for the better part of two years left me over the non-functioning mess I was, I went through the motions of sadness without ever really feeling anything at all. My doctor warned me to be extremely vigilant when it came to taking my medication each day, and after four months of taking a pill each morning, I found out why.
Different anti-depressants are absorbed at different speeds by the body. Most are absorbed so quickly to the point that even a day without them can rob the brain of a chemical that it requires after prolonged medication use. I let my prescription run out without renewing it in the same way you find yourself out of milk when you need it most – you kind of assume a bottle that big will last forever. I was on a bus on the way to see my doctor when the withdrawals came. I felt a burning deep inside my head, like fire was threatening to burst from behind my eyes, showing everyone that I wasn’t like them. They would know that I’d been taking a pill each day simply to pretend I was normal.
A live wire had been pressed against the point where my head met my body – my thoughts hurt, my memories oozed like tar, and I could feel the idea I had of myself and what I looked like melting into the floor as I gripped the seat in front of me tightly. I shook, my vision blurred, and I staggered home as sweat dripped thickly from my body – I can barely remember how I got home, but I must’ve walked through traffic, because I can recall a car screeching to a halt in front of me, the driver flipping me off as I shuffled across the road.
I was nearly home when the fog I’d been living in disappeared – I felt the same terrible clarity I had when I stood on the edge of suicide, and the shape of everything I’d been hiding from became clear.
I remembered my sister screaming at my father and disappearing into the rain.
I remembered dismissing the idea of leaving a note as I meticulously tied my bedsheets together.
I remembered blankly watching the girl I loved telling me that I’d become too difficult to be around.
…
My usual pharmacy has closed down, and my new counter attendant is a smiley twenty-something with a patchy attempt at a moustache who’s clearly new on the job. “How long have you been using them?” He gestures towards the prescription, as if he’s afraid of saying the name out loud.
“Oh. Around eight months.”
“How are you finding them?”
The words come automatically. “I love them. They work great.”
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Written by Brenton Cassidy. Photo by Alexandra.
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