Happy Birthday, Antidepressants

I'm so depressed I can't even finish writing a journal entry to myself about my depression, let alone compile the evidence that I will present to whoever I can threaten into seeing me ASAP in order to convince them that I need to be on pills. When it's bad enough that I can put aside my consuming paranoia that antidepressants are just one small step away from sci-fi style social control, it's really bad. When you have a post-it note that lists the things you must focus on in order of importance, and the top two things have to be "eat" and "sleep" because you keep forgetting to do both and really have no desire to even fix those things, maybe it's time to recognize that you are sick in the head.

I literally care about nothing.

The best part is, going to therapy has actually made things worse, since my therapist is under the impression that I have some sort of self-awareness problem, as if years of journaling and writing and blogging have not made me obnoxiously absorbed with my own head. I go in and sit down, and she stares at me until I start talking, and for 50 minutes I just fill the air with concerns that I didn't even know existed, that I might just be making up to make sure I get my $15's worth. I leave empty handed. The one time she gave me something constructive and concrete to do - exercise and change my sleep schedule - I almost jumped up and down with glee. The whole point was to go and figure out how to fix things, to get help. But then at the end of our session this week when I asked her what I could do to make things better, she plainly explained to me that I knew how to fix things, I just needed to do it. "I'm not here to tell you what to do, that won't help you. I'm here to listen and try to understand."

To Lena, later that afternoon: "As a patient and an essayist, ideally, she should be paying me to entertain her, if that's what this is going to be."

It doesn't help that my in-training therapist just seems so goddamn therapisty. She wears turtlenecks, glasses, and solid fabric circle headbands that hold back her perfectly rounded mass of short kinky hair. Her voice is smooth. She is generic in a soothing and reassuring way. When she fails to help, I look at myself and say, she's the sane one, she probably knows what she's doing. Way to fail at therapy again, Cara.

My head is sick, it's that simple. At the slightest trigger it vomits up the most insane, anxious, insecure bullshit it can manage. Tonight I went from being playfully made fun of for my Harry Potter love to questioning my intelligence and self worth, my ability to remember "important things" (including late 18th century painters) or even anything, my skills as a conversationalist, as an intellectual, as a decent girlfriend - all of this in a matter of mere handful of minutes. Everything and anything becomes blown epically out of proportion until something like not cleaning my room becomes the lynchpin in my academic success this semester, in college, success in my work life, in the rest of my life - the fear and panic sweeps in so rapidly. It's a rough time for everyone, being so close to graduation and the uncertain future, but while everyone's house occasionally has a small kitchen fire, I'm like a housing development full of cookie cutter homes with faulty wiring, soaked in gasoline. Every day I trigger in a flash and destroy myself and then wake up and do it again.

Besides, I always wanted some Zoloft to match the pharmaceutical swag post-it notes my first therapist gave me.
It's finally time for the real deal.

Fragment

...it is a delicate balance, a hundred spinning plates atop wobbly dowels, and I haven’t been a circus performer for very long, just street shows for passersby, I haven’t tried to impressed crowds or met the demands of loyal fans. I don’t know what it’s like to have a long-term gig, it’s only my first night and my adrenaline’s pumping, my hands are shaking, I’m running back and forth trying to make sure everything whirls and dances beautifully, that nothing wobbles off while my back is turned, while I overconfidently conduct more plates onto their perches. Keep them all afloat, keep the crowds oooing and ahhing rather than gasping and sighing, collecting their coats and bags and leaving me to sit in the solitude of the harsh spotlight with my plates all crashed on the floor.