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i quit counting sleepless and embarassed about the way that i feel trying to make molehills out of mountains building basecamp at the bottom of a really big deal ani difranco, "independance day" I had one of my embarassment attacks last night. (that's what I call them in my head- only worry if it actually makes sense.) ....I was lying until well into morning, curled up in a ball, dying of embarassment, for no reason whatsoever. Just all of a sudden, ever embarassing thing I've done in years started coming back to torment me, and they wouldn't go away. Little things are what bother me the most, not the stuff most people would think I'd find embarassing. It's like when I finally got up the nerve to ask my therapist this question I'd been wondering about and she said "ooohhhh, sarah" in this voice that made it obvious she thought I was stupid for worrying about that... or the time I was in class once and asked the guy next to me if he liked cherry lifesavers, because I don't and I was gonna throw it out if he didn't eat it, and he looked at me like I was the craziest person he'd ever seen.... or when I was in seventh grade and went to a sleepover and woke up with my pajamas covered in blood because my pad had unstuck itself... or that time I went to talk to that english teacher we were convinced "cared" and i saw it dawn on her that "ja" and I weren't your average teenage friends. (I don't think the fact we were romantically involved could have occured to her, because we weren't at that point...) or.... okay, so they don't seem that little, spelled out like that.... but when I'm thinking about them, like I did last night, they feel like these little five second intervals that are completely taking over my life and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I'm sure there's a name for all these feelings, but I don't want to know what it is... because I'm sure it would fall under something in that little DSM book all the shrinks love, and I just don't want another diagnosis. Whenever I discover there's one that I come close to, and I learn the rest of the symptoms, I suddenly begin to have all those other symptoms. When I first learned there was actually a book that listed depression as an illness, I read all the symptoms, and I already had enough of them to be qualified, but I started coming down with more. Until then I hadn't had any real problems with eating or sleeping, and all of a sudden I stopped doing both... I lost 30 pounds, and put 50 back on by the time I was out of the hospital. So if there's a diagnosis, I don't want to know it. But it's probably just some euphemism for "extreme shyness." I should probably just get over it. It doesn't work that way, but it sounds nice.... It's weird, though, the moments that bother me when I'm feeling like that. It's not the memory of being in eighth grade and having my mom wait for the bus with me, holding an umbrella above my head because I wouldn't hold it myself... I was so mad at her that day, that she wouldn't even give me the right to stand in the rain if I wanted to... and the memory of my mom yelling at me in the grocery store in front of my best friend, when I was in sixth grade (or so), that doesn't bother me anymore. It doesn't even bother me when I remember how every single person in the school I used to go to knew when I got out of the hospital exactly where I'd been and why I'd been there. Or later, when they all knew that the same girl they'd called "crazy" a couple of months before was now actually admitting that she's a lesbian (that proved I was crazy, in their books...) ...those memories don't bother me. I think I can only get seriously embarassed when only one or two people are watching. I don't get shy speaking in front of more people than that... even just three other people, is okay, and I have very little problem speaking up in front of a classroom of people, and even less when I'm up on stage talking to hundreds. It's the one on one that scares me. God, my shrink would have a field day with this whole thing! ...'course I'm not actually going to a shrink any more... my therapist told me not to make another appointment unless I thought I needed one (and I didn't) and my shrink said "in six months" and when I told him I'd be away at college then, he said "okay, call if you need a prescription." I seriously don't think that guy would notice if I quadrupled my dose without telling him. I've been regulating my own meds for a year now... cutting pills in half, taking them every other day, calling him up to see if they make them any smaller... he's so skeptical when I tell him that even cutting down from 5mg a day (of paxil- 5 mgs is half of the smallest pill) I get dizzy and neasous and can't even think of getting in a car... he doesn't want to actually tell me it's probably all in my head, but I think that's what he's thinking, and I know it's not, so I just don't tell him any more. they've proved it to me enough times that things I thought were real were only in my head, but this time I'm sure. Because I never remember taking my pill.... my mom had this idea a few years ago that I would sleep more regular hours if I took my pill at the same time everyday. It doesn't work, but she's kept it up anyway, so she wakes me up at 8am every other day (I'm down to 5mgs every other day.) I sit up, swallow, and go back to sleep, and I don't remember a thing. I really never know whether or not I took my pill that morning, but my mom almost never forgets so I don't worry about it. The proof comes when she does forget-- if it were really all in my head, then nothing would change when I don't take my pill as long as I don't know that I didn't take it. (that does make sense, read it again.) So how is it that it's only days that she really did forget that by 8pm I'm lying face down on the couch wondering why in the world I feel so bad? ...for some reason, it usually takes me a while to wonder whether or not I might've missed a dose... and when that happens, and it's only happened a couple of times, when my mom thinks back she says "yeah, I guess maybe today was supposed to be the day you were supposed to take it. oh well." like it's not a problem that I'm lying on the couch miserable, like it's not entirely her fault... I don't know why taking it every other day works, I just know that the last time I tried to actually quit I didn't get sick until the third day, so I tried every other day and I didn't get sick at all. According to my doctor, there should be basically nothing left in my system, but he really doesn't know. It's a relatively new medicine, newer than prozac, and they don't know much about it, and the recommend people take it for one year at the most, but I've been on it for more than three. I'm rambling. (my definition of rambling, since I don't know the real one: starting on one topic and ending up on a different one with no clue how you got there.) It is now 4:22 AM, according to my slightly off computer clock, and that means I should go to bed so that I'm not up when my dad gets up (any minute now) because when I'm up when my dad gets up I have to worry about him coming over and seeing what I'm doing. so g'night. I hope you sleep better that I probably will. |