The stories I started working on didn't pan out, so I spent another day relaxing and cuddling with the boys, who've been exceptionally affectionate the past couple days. At least today wasn't fraught with anxiety like Sunday was, so that's always a good thing.
See, I have wicked anxiety. Not the Zoloft variety where I can't function around people (if I'm not functioning around people, it's by choice), but the kind of anxiety that borders on paranoia. No, wait, there's nothing "bordering" about it: At its zenith, it's full-blown, "Wow, you're fucked up and need serious help" paranoia. It's tied to depression, which is rampant on two sides of the family -- the biolgical and my mom's side -- so if you needed proof that depression is both environmental and genetic, here you go. Yes, I take medication for it, and yes, I wholeheartedly support anyone that decides to go on meds to treat their depression, as long as they go through the right channels and use it wisely (meaning, going to their doctor and getting a physical to rule out any medical factors, then going to a therapist to see if the problem can't be remedied non-pharmaceutically. Then after getting the medication if it's needed, taking an active role and paying attention to the meds' effects, not just getting them and then giving up if they don't do what you think they're supposed to do.)
I wasn't always pro-meds. In fact, I remember a time when I was way anti-Prozac since it seemed everyone was going to their doctors and getting on it because they'd broken up with their boyfriend or lost their job or broke a nail or whatever, and that just bugged me. Then my mom had her third nervous breakdown when I was 25, and the psychiatrist who took over her case finally, after many years of having other doctors prescribe her sleeping pill after sleeping pill, understood that she needed to treat the
depression first before Mom would be able to sleep. She prescribed Prozac, and it took about a year for my mom to recover -- well, as much as she'll ever recover, anyway, because Mother is Mother, and nothing is ever good.
Nevertheless, it was still one of the hardest things I've ever done, asking my doctor for help, because I'm a Region Broad, and I'm supposed to be able to handle shit. But I'd already been through therapy three separate times since I was 21, so I knew what I was supposed to do in times of crisis; I just couldn't physically do it. So yeah, go meds if you need them.
Now, if someone would like to bring the freakin' price down on them so I could actually not have to decide whether to eat or buy my medication, life would be grand. I mean, what? Do I LOOK like I'm on Medicare yet!?!?
Oh, whatEVER.