About a thousand years ago (actually, more like a dozen), I started taking antidepressants, or as they’re categorized in the medical industry, antipsychotics, e.g., “I must take pills lest I become psychotic.” Antipsychotic has to be just about the worst name for anything. As if pills would really help that.

I took them for a few years until the California State Department Of Crazy (probably not its real name) would no longer give them to me. When I first sought their help for antipsychotics, I was unemployed. Now, I’m not. Fair enough. It is kind of ridiculous for the taxpayers of California to foot the bill for my crazy pills when I have private insurance.

Even when I got insurance, I didn’t get more crazy pills though. When the love of my life died, I decided that if ever there was a time for antipsychotics, that was it. I searched through my insurance company’s website for a doctor. What I found was a therapist who insisted that I had substance abuse issues, because I took precisely half a Klonopin to make it through my boyfriend’s memorial. As it turned out, she couldn’t prescribe medication anyway. So, I paid a lot of money for useless therapy and I still didn’t get any crazy pills. I broke up with her.

Instead of finding a psychologist, psychiatrist or nurse practitioner (now I know that those are the ones who can prescribe medication–therapists cannot), I didn’t do anything. I just let it slide again.

Fast forward to April of this year. Hello! You may have noticed that I started writing posts again around then. Unfortunately, that and a bunch of other time sink activities are pretty much all I did in April instead of doing my actual job.

For pretty much the entire month of April and into the beginning of May, I got hardly any work done at all. This is not good for a number of reasons. Primarily those involving continuing to stay employed, but also for reasons involving my mental health.

It was a vicious depression cycle. I’d wake up and say to myself, “today, I’m going to get some work done,” and then I’d sit at my computer and do anything but work. I couldn’t sleep, because I was panicking over not having gotten any work done. Repeat for an entire month.

The problem with depression is that it doesn’t want to be cured. It wants me to crawl into the dark hole inside myself and snuggle there forever, so it’s really difficult to force myself to get help. Depression wants me to fail. It wants me to get fired from my job. It wants me to be miserable. It even wants me to die. It fucking sucks and I’d really like to punch it squarely in the nose, except it doesn’t have a nose. It just has a niggling little voice that tells me that everything is pointless and worthless and why even bother. Fuck you, depression.

Finally, after I wrote the post about religion and sexual abuse, I forced myself to get to work and then I just kept working. I knocked out a project that normally takes more than a month in just under two weeks. None of my coworkers will ever know the angst that project cause me. They’ll never know how hard it was for me to get it done.

At the same time I forced myself to work, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. Yesterday, I had a Zoom call where I proceeded to spill my life story to a total stranger (not unlike this blog really). PTSD from child sexual abuse, anxiety, major depressive disorder… crazy pills, please?

As of about a half an hour ago, I am back on antidepressants. Yay me. I’m hoping that I can finally figure out some sort of blog/work balance instead of the feast or famine approach I’ve been doing lately. Hopefully, once the antidepressants kick in in about a month or so, I can do just that. But today, I’m just reveling in my small victory. I took the all important first step towards muffling depression. I’m so very proud of myself. *Pats self on back.*