Ping Pong Jubilee!

I'm back on the Zoloft again, and it isn't very pretty.

Yesterday, I had a little breakdown. Nobody in particular to blame other than myself, but I'm feeling pinched from all sides. Parenting, money, divorce, work, Scrawled, friendships, relationships, plus a billion other things… I can't prioritise, I can't think straight. I've become irritable, paranoid, and extremely stressed out.

The doctor said that I had severe anxiety, depression, and stress, despite things going fairly well for me lately. He gave me a prescription for 100mg Zoloft, and wished me luck. I popped the first one at around 8.30pm last night. By 10.30pm, I was stumbling around like a tranquilised bear, slurring and not seeing much of anything in front of me. Fifteen minutes later, I was puking my guts out.

I didn't sleep well, either. Between feeling like I was either boiling or freezing in my bed, I couldn't sleep any more than an hour and a half at a time. I overthought ridiculous things. I cried. I tried to write and type, but my hands were shaking uncontrollably. At 3am, I vomited again. I can honestly say that I have NEVER been more terrified of a drug in my body than I was last night. My heart was palpitating, my teeth were chattering and gnashing, I wanted to scream and crawl out of my skin. It was like I was experiencing withdrawals to the worst extreme. I'm supposed to take my second one sometime this morning. I don't want to go through those same effects this morning with Charlotte around, so I might wait until she's gone to bed for the night before I take it again.

Despite the horrendous night, I can't help feeling disappointed in myself. I'm a proud person, and the first time I took Zoloft, it was pretty much forced down my throat.  I hated it, it numbed me; I was unenthusiastic, vulnerable, malleable. I didn't care about anything, and I couldn't cope with that.  The alternative was to quit cold turkey and deal or resort to other means. I did fine with that up until now, so I'm not understanding why I'm feeling so overwhelmed. My life is good, but I feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders when it comes to making life choices for myself and Charlotte. It's fear, and it's crippling. I want to care, but not so much that I'm freaking out over trivial things.  Self-help books don't help, at least not this time.  I hate feeling disappointed in myself, that I've had to swallow my pride and ask for help. I shouldn't have to feel like that, and I don't know why I do, but I feel like I've let myself and Charlotte down.

I'm scared of becoming numb like I did in highschool, though I didn't have these side-effects back then — I must've only been on the 50mg ones. I'm scared that I'll turn into somebody I don't want to be, but right now I can't handle being everything to everyone, I can almost feel my brain liquefying.  Misha asked what she could do to help me out, and there really is nothing anybody can do for me — I just want some clarity and some breathing room, so I can step back, prioritise, then make my next move.

Is that too much to ask?

I believe that my body is flagging and I'm coming down with the common cold or flu.

Working in pathology and having to read out sick people's results all the time doesn't really help with the "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows Everywhere" mentality that you try to keep when your own body is ailing. A study should be performed on people who deal with disease all the time and the rapid decline of the rational psyche when one is growing ill. I'm sure the results would be interesting, if interesting equals going absolutely batshit insane!!!

MY FREAKING OUT INVOLVES:

Studying my blinking whilst on heavy cold & flu tablets: Slowly but surely — with or without caffiene — my eyelids slow right down and blink about a half-second apart from each other. It's like seeing the time+space continuum warp right before your very eyes. It's really sad and sort of reminds me of a maimed lizard.

My inability to speak/move properly: From various momentous events in my life, I've developed a very mild stutter when I'm on my way to being overwhelmed. When I'm overwhelmed, I'm a gobbling turkey — it happens most when I'm out without my glasses and have to read to people, like ordering from a menu. When I'm ill, I do the weird turkey thing, I tend to forget EVERYTHING about 5 seconds after I hear it (that's pretty good, since all I hear normally when most people talk is "Wharp-wharp-whaaaaarp-wharrrrrp"), and eventually stumble into walls and doors like a marionette being held by someone with Parkinson's Disease. In slow-motion.

Coffee starts tasting bad. So do cigarettes: I know it's bad when I go off my two main vices. I should probably take heed, since I'm an overuser of both stimulants, but I'm a moron so I keep going.

Lethargic and crabby: Fuck off, I can't be arsed explaining this one.

Actually, I've been teetering on the edge of sickness for the last two weeks, so maybe it's just a prolonged bout of a piss-weak strain of something. I'll get better, I always do. I'm still alive, so chillax.

Okay, this is going to be a bit confusing at first (part 1 of a #? series):

When I first left home, the first place I stayed at was a shoddy 3rd-level apartment with a friend, Will, and his housemate, Owen. Will's house was also occupied by his visiting cousin, Aaron, who needed a break from his crazy girlfriend down in Melbourne, X… by coming up to sojourn in Brisbane with his girlfriend's best friend, Dani.

Stay with me here, it gets easier.

Will's place wasn't my first choice to visit. Actually, I hadn't really planned running away all that well; I left with a few articles of (totally impractical) clothing, one pair of shoes and socks, and the rest of my backpack was still filled with the previous week's schoolbooks and other schoolgirl paraphernalia. Fortunately, Will answered his phone and welcomed me into his home until I "got on my feet." Which really meant, "for however long it takes for you to chicken out and go back home."

On the drive to Will's place that first night, I had outlandish visions of the "Secret Life Of Us" sort of atmosphere; a house filled with tealight candles, origami, massive ethnic bowls bought from The Tree Of Life, vintage furniture, guitars everywhere, and op-shop/market knick-knacks. I imagined housemates staying up cradling their coffees all night, talking about all sorts of grown-up things like existentialism and economics.

I prepared to bullshit my way through whatever they could dish up, as I was only 16 and these people were in their early 20s. Leaving home was no easy task, and I had to keep the momentum going… if that meant acting like I knew what the hell I was doing, then cool.

Walking through the door, I was greeted by the stone-cold reality of the struggling-artist lifestyle. Two sofas that looked (and smelled) like they'd once belonged to hobo junkies, a huge curling poster of The Beatles, a sink full of mouldy crockery, and an odd smell emanating from… well, everything. I'm taking a stab in the dark here, but the smell was not unlike what I'd imagine dickhole to smell like. Clean, unclean, mangled, neat, whatever – dickhole.

His housemate Owen came out, and he wasn't as scrubbed up as when I'd first met him a few months before; 4-day growth, linted boxers, no shirt, and that odd smell. He shook my hand vigorously and with a cheeky grin, plopped his 6'1" frame into one of the overworked sofas and stared at the TV. Owen said he was a freelance photographer, and was trying really hard to get a spot working for National Geographic. His photos were alright, but I'm easily pleased and definitely not knowledgable in photographic mastery; I'm sure he's not the only one to take pictures of sunsets and palm trees, and photos of manky pigeons mid-flight are so overdone they'd disintegrate with the next gust.

Even better than his photography, however, was his tendency to spin massive tales about places he's been to and places he's been. His claim to fame was that he "briefly dated" supermodel and superMILF Heidi Klum.

Now before you raise that cynical brow, let me assure you that I've seen the photos of them together. Oh yes, nothing says "we're a couple" like pictures of Heidi, some industry person, another industry person, some famous person, then almost off-shot, Owen. There's also another shot of her with him; he's talking, and she's pivoting to move elsewhere.

Lest we forget that he "briefly dated" Heidi Klum.

Sometime later, in my two week stay, I was to find out (via Dani, who started sleeping with him) that Owen only has one testicle; he was on a plane and apparently, one of his testicles crept right on up and disappeared, never to be seen again. A panicked visit to the doctors didn't really assuage him; a thorough check, a sympathetic pat on the back, then a disheartening, "It'll come down when it's ready."

I still think that's a riot.

The best thing about Owen? Well, he introduced me to artichoke hearts. That's pretty cool. He wasn't all that funny. He was too Euro to deal with for any prolonged amount of time. Hmmm… he introduced me to artichoke hearts.

I wonder what Owen's doing these days, and if his testicle ever came back.

What do you do when Blogger refuses to not only withhold your posts, but refuses to save drafts?

Move elsewhere.

Check.

Anyway.

I was clearing out my mobile phone messages the other day, to make way for bigger and better (no, just newer) text and voice messages, when I got through to my drafts folder.

There's always a sick sense of pending doom whenever I click to peruse the messages that never were — arcing up at people for petty little things, reminding housemates to feed the cat, etc. More often than not, I remember the moment I wrote said text messages, but either aborted the mission to:

a) start messaging anew, rephrased for bigger impact, or;

2) let my common sense kick in, realising that my text-message-to-be was going to be totally dumb.

Anyway, after all the half-arsed nostalgia, domesticity and silly text drafts were deleted, I found this tasty little nugget:

25/10/2005 11:49pm
Ignored by Beyonce and
Andrew Gaze because
they yelled at homeless
guy. Possums everywhere.

Almost haiku-like, I'm inclined to think that the scenario was this: I fell asleep. Had a dream about Beyonce, Andrew Gaze, homeless guy, and possums. Woke up. Couldn't find a pen, so text-drafted the memories from my dream into my phone.

Weird!

I feel really odd today and I’m not sure why. 

I’ll return to this when I can think of something decent to say.