Little Victories.

For the first time in more than two years, I have no antidepressants coursing through my veins. It's been a rough while getting off the Effexor but I did it. I'm starting to feel again. Like really feel. I don't think I really understood how numb I have been for the past two years. I would hold things in and then they would only get out through extreme measures. No sex drive until it became a physical necessity. I felt so numb that I would just go and go until I collapsed. Like I couldn't feel that I was pushing myself too hard until it was too late.

Wouldn't feel hurt until it was too much to control and then with a little help from alcohol, completely explode in a wave of tremors, tears and toxic anger. I simply wouldn't feel until I couldn't stop myself from feeling.

Now the feelings have been creeping back in. Imposter syndrome is now an every day or two event again. I rode my bike to work today because some part of me was convinced that I would rage quit my job if I had the option. One single email, one slip up and I felt the crushing weight of dispair and failure. I figured I couldn't quit because on the bike there is no way I could take my paper box full of personal items home. So build in a buffer. 

Since 2008-2009, I've always had a bag hidden at my desk, of nearly every desk job I've had in the past 10 years. Ready to pack up and go. Getting laid off twice in 15 months creates some anxiety, ever since it always feels like I'm waiting for the pink slip to drop.

Loneliness is now more often wave instead of a constant pulsing current. Goosebumps happen when the right chorus hits or the wind blows just right. It feels like I can feel every gnat, fly or mosquito that lands anywhere on my body. It feels like going through a second puberty. Suddenly all of these emotions are back and vibrant and after two plus years of progressively feeling less and less it is a lot to take on. As I increased my dosage, I became more and more a zombie. 

Changing living situations over the past 12 months have made my suburban home feel a lot more isolated and more and more like a prison as opposed to a home. Children grow up and they create their own lives and the importance of parents in their social structure seems to decrease. I was not ready for it to change as much as it has and that just made me feel more and more like a zombified isolated disaster. 

Getting off the Effexor has helped. It's one step of many. I'm trying to look at long term goals and not focus on the frustrations of the immediate moment and past. How I'm not where I want to be and haven't been there in a long time. How I feel isolated and that leads me to isolate myself more.

It's exciting. It's terrifying. And it is all very overwhelming. I'm glad to be off the drugs and to feel again. But it's like every nerve in and outside me has been turned to 11.

It's good to feel. But maybe not this much. There has to be a happy medium.Today I biked to work and I will bike home. I made the needed changes to the email related issue and the world didn't end. I tried not to go scorched earth and burn bridges (metaphorically of course). I got some things done. At best today is a little victory. But it is a victory nonetheless.