Raging in my own bowl

After writing yesterday's post and then reflecting upon it, I think it is important to note that I am not weaning off of the anti-depressant without being under the care of a psychiatrist. I also don't want to give the impression that medication isn't a useful or necessary element of healing. I finally agreed to medication after many years of depression because, as a mother, I didn't feel I could parent my then three year old child without help. I am grateful for the relief it gave me.

I shared my blog post with a very dear friend yesterday and she asked many good questions. One was about how I felt the medication impacted my emotions. Today, I want to try to characterize how I felt my emotions changed after I began taking the medication. I think a better word for how the medication changed my moods is that it dulled the negative ones. They didn't feel as sharp. I felt sadness, anger, revulsion, frustration, guilt, longing; however, these feelings were blunted. I didn't experience the same kinds of mood swings that I had in the past. Feelings like anger, frustration, sadness or isolation weren't as disruptive to my day-to-day living. I didn't feel as stuck in them. There wasn't this lingering fear that whatever the negative emotion might be that it would last forever. I found that I didn't suffer from busy mind as much...trying to solve a problem constantly....reliving an awkward moment over and over again...obsessing that someone didn't like me or that I was being intentionally left out of things. I wasn't as reactive or constantly poised for battle. I played the"if only" game less often and the conspiracy theories faded away. However, I didn't feel like myself. I wondered if I would ever write again. Would I ever feel deeply enough to be moved to write a poem or a story.

During the first month on the medication, I was reminded of a poem by Anne Sexton entitled For John, Who Begs Me Not To Inquire Further that I had to read for one of my litarature classes in college. In it, Sexton is describing her depression. The first time I read the poem, it resonated powerfully for me. I felt she had described very succintly not only her experience, but mine as well.

The lines:

I tapped my head

It was a glass, an inverted bowl.

It is a small thing

to rage in your own bowl.

At first it was private.

Then it was more than myself;

it was you or your house

or your kitchen.

I had raged in my own bowl many times. That was how I defined the obsessing, the replaying tapes of past events, the games of If Only.

As I noticed my emotions blunting, I also thought of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf and many other writers who struggled with mental illnes and depression. What role did depression play in their genius? I want to be careful here because many of these women and men ended his or her own life. I don't want to confuse their ability to write masterpieces with the mental struggles they endured or suggest that mental illness is the price for great works of literature. Reflecting upon these questions now, I don't think it is fair or even answerable to ask, "what if medication had worked for them? What might we have lost? What might we have gained?" However, I have come to understand that these questions were my way of attempting to figure out the value of my strong negative emotions. I found myself questioning the value of anger in women and questioned whether I was being forced into silence through medication. I still ask myself this question today.

As Sexton's poem suggests to me, depression isn't simply about raging in one's own bowl. It extends outward and envelops one's family and friends. I agreed to finally see a psychiatrist because I was worried for my son. I did not want my problem to become his problem. I grew up in a household weighted down by alcoholism and depression and I did not want that for my child. However, there was a small voice within me that kept crying out..."but it's not just me! I am angry for a valid reason! Can't anyone see the injustices here." I thought for sure the first time I sat down with the psychiatrist and tearfully explained my plight that he would be able to see what I saw: that it wasn't just me...it was a whole world of injustices, misunderstandings and inconsistencies. If all of these things could just change, then I wouldn't feel so bad. Instead, he listened very patiently and very calmly as I described how I felt, then excused himself for a few minutes and returned with a sample bag of Lexapro. He gave me instructions for how to gradually start taking the medication and scheduled a follow-up appointment to see how I was doing. There was no further discussion. No time to argue. I was simply sent home with my little bag of pills.

Lexapro made me very, very sick, so we next tried the generic form of Prozac, fluoxetine. Once I got up to a regular dose of fluoxetine, I started to feel better. After about a month or so on fluoxetine, I remember returning home after a morning walking my dog in the woods on a beautiful fall morning and noticing how lovely the landscaping was around our townhouse. The sky was clear and blue. The air crisp and refreshing against my skin. As I took in my surroundings, I noticed that I felt happy and calm. I allowed myself to notice it and be with it because it seemed as if it had been a very long time since I could remember feeling happy. This seemed to be as good a reason as any to continue to take the medication. Maybe there was something more for me than dark feelings, isolation and self-loathing. Maybe I was really someone who needed help because my biology didn't enable me the kinds of relief others experienced.

About three months into taking fluoxitine, after talking to my psychiatrist about wanting to try to have another baby and that I hoped to breast feed after giving birth, I switched to sertraline, the generic form of Zoloft. I have been taking one form of anti-depressent or another for nearly three years. In that time, I have had my ups and downs. I've had three miscarriages, coped with the stresses of my husband's very busy travel schedule resulting in long stretches of single-parenthood, the grief of losing my brother, my father-in-law and my great aunt, supporting my mother through some of these loses and the complexities of watching my mother watch her father age. My life isn't perfect, but it has been a lot better. So, why would I want to try coming off medication?