I stopped taking my meds, fully, on April 19th.
I had been tapering off of them after an attempt to go cold turkey made me incredibly sick.
I had been tapering after trying an increased dose when I realized the meds weren’t really working anymore – or at least, they weren’t working well enough to be worth the side effects and the cost and the hassle of having to go to the doctor to keep refilling my prescription.
Increasing the dose made things noticeably worse, when I started feeling more anger, feeling more violent. Clearly, increasing my dose wasn’t the solution this time, though it had helped me get stable and keep functioning in previous instances.
This time, I decided to taper and see how I did without meds. I have been on a few different SSRIs, and after an SNRI and NDRI cocktail, I wasn’t really eager to try another.
I went off my meds, and I really don’t want to talk about it.
I don’t want to talk about it because I’m tired of the responses and the assumptions that people make. I’m tired of hearing “congratulations for letting go of that crutch!” I’m tired of the jump to the conclusion that I must be anti-med. I’m tired of people assuming I’m judging or med-shaming them for taking their meds because I decided to stop taking mine. I’m just tired of people reacting without pausing to consider how my experience might be different from theirs.
I don’t want to talk about it because I’ve been struggling since I’ve been off them, just like I was struggling while on them, and I don’t want my emotions to be dismissed or reduced to a need for medication.
I don’t want to talk about the underlying issues because I’ve talked about them already, endlessly. I’m tired of them and talking about it doesn’t change anything.
I don’t want to talk about much because people can so rarely meet me where I am, instead projecting their own lives and experiences onto me, making assumptions that what I need is the same thing they need.
I haven’t wanted to talk about my struggles because I don’t want people to try to fix them for me, to give me advice, to tell me what I should do. I don’t want other people’s reactions, though I would like their presence.
I would like to be witnessed, to be seen.
I rarely feel that way, when I try to share what’s in my heart, when I try to share what is wounding my spirit.
I’ve been feeling trapped. I felt this way, last, before I made the decision to leave my academic career. Before that, I felt it in my PhD program, and before that right before my divorce, and before that, right before I met my ex-husband, when I was trying to figure out how to get out of my hometown.
When I feel trapped, I start to feel the need to disappear, to exit, to cease to exist.
When I feel this way, I can rarely talk about it with other people because most people really don’t know how to react when faced with suicidality. People get uncomfortable and I end up feeling worse, because now I’ve upset another person. Now we’re both uncomfortable and unhappy and what good did it do?
It’s the end of National Suicide Prevention Month, and I’m still here, despite not really wanting to be.
I’m still here, taking almost-daily walks for my mental health. I’m still here, trying to journal and meditate and do yoga. I’m trying to tap or shake or have solo dance parties when the anxiety knots up, tight and hard, in my gut. I’m letting myself cry, unless I’m at work.
I might decide that I need to go on meds again. I might decide to keep trying other things.
But I just don’t want to talk about it, though I would like people to know about it.
So I guess that’s why I’m writing about it instead.
