Sunday, August 17, 2008
Day 6 on Lexapro.
3:21pm
So, today is a little bit better than yesterday. Since the dreary moment I found myself hovering over the toilet six days ago, I’ve been on what I’m calling self-inflicted bed rest. Self-inflicted bed rest consists of (but is not limited to) the following activities:
** wearing a fantastic pair of flannel I Love Lucy pajamas almost exclusively for days on end.
** running the air-conditioner almost constantly to handle the inclement temperatures endured while wearing aforementioned fantastic I Love Lucy pajamas.
** avoiding matters I find currently upsetting, which at this point is almost everything, by playing “The Making of Animal House” on an almost constant DVR loop, with the intermittent substitution of the A&E Biography of John Belushi.
** not cleaning.
** not thinking.
** not crying.
Yesterday, I felt like I was standing with my back to a door that was burgeoning with the weight of the world behind it. I braced myself. Bent my knees. Dug in my heels and hoped for the best.
And I waited. And it was a very long day. When I first awoke, I was very tired. All throughout it, I was very tired.
And as the day drew to a close, when I absolutely had to retrieve some necessaries from the grocery store, I enlisted the support of my trusty friend E. Liz to go with me. Because the panic attack I suffered at the thought of leaving the house…and the panic attack I suffered when I actually left the house…at the end of a very long day…when the weight of the world was crushing me beneath it…was too much for me, a wildly situational agoraphobe, to bear. And so, she did. She came with me to the grocery store. And she pushed the basket and reminded me to breathe and let me listen to Bette Midler as loudly as I wanted to in the car. And when we got home, she sat on the couch and shared her box of Hostess Ding Dongs with me and promised everything was going to be alright.
And I think she’s right. Everything is going to be alright. My thoughts, even yesterday, are not as tortuous as they were earlier in the week. Even when the bad and mean thoughts start to sneak in, I am able to quell them fairly successfully and again send them on their way. And that’s a huge step in right direction.
I know I have to find the inner core of me again. I have to rebuild and refresh and renew. Maybe when I come back, I’ll be better than ever.
Until then I’ll be sitting here quietly in my I Love Lucy pajamas, eating fairly old pizza and memorizing little known facts about college movies from thirty years ago. Don’t be jealous, kids. Right now, it’s all I’ve got.
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As Maddie would say… “It happens sometimes.” Everyone gets a little freaked out at Wallyworld. Sometimes you just have to punch the moose in the nose and look for the nearest Ding Dong. A little Kathy Griffin therapy never hurts, either. Hang in there, sister. Things will get easier.
I was only dissappointed when I realized that this was only one blog and not two, “these are the days” and “that are long”. Ok now that I wrote that out it seems really dumb, but I just like reading your blog. It makes me think that since we are friends and hold great conversations together than I too could write an amazing Blog. Too bad that I dont have the editting skills that you do, see I am not even going to go back and put in the ( ‘ ) that I left out in don’t. My career as a blogger just died. I got it, I will go around and just post comments on my friends blog and then in a way I will be in fact blogging… head hurts, going to back slowly away from the computer…