~ Citalopram Chronicles (Week 3 and 4).
“Non sum qualis eram.”
I had hoped this would be a celebration of the efficacy of medication, that the moral of the story would have been: seek help if thy brain is faulty, take thy medicine like a good boy, and all would be well. I had even hoped for a happy ending of some kind that would be used to inspire you.
It did help me through a few rough weeks. My brain had been too distracted by the side effects for more insidious thoughts.
But by the 3rd week, the side effects dissipated and I was left with only that dreadful Clarity. The fog is dispelled, and for the first time in a long time, I saw it, a barren field, stretching as far as the eyes could see. Bones and sinews of shattered trees strewn about, roots still grasping desperately to the ground. Patches of grass grew here and there, bent but unbroken, beneath hazy skies bronzed by wind, dust and decay.
Yet life persisted there. Small huddled figures, faces wrapped beneath layers of cloth, eyes sheltered under thick hoods. Oh such lonely, tormented things. The wind battered them relentlessly. The sun waned and cast long shadows behind them, and respite of night never came. Like worms in a desert they trudged forward, forward. It was a world without moon and star light.
I went off meds in Week 4.
I told my doctor that the rough bits were over, and I didn’t want to be on meds anymore. He told me to split my pill in two and wane it off over the course of a week.
A little over a month ago I guessed just what life was like, and now clarity brought its nakedness to view. There was no romance, no whimsy, no absurdity, no meandering sensibilities and overwrought metaphors. Clarity had killed my essence.
These… feelings, the desire to let known the hurt, the want, the honesty of life. The journey from frigid routines to tender intimacies is fraught with terror, swinging from avoidance one moment to anxieties the next. How did humans deal with it all? And is this all there is?
Worse still I had been infected by fantasies. Once there was nothing, now I saw multitudes. In one of them flowers bloomed, my life hung on a stray petal of her hair flung onto the air. In another I had become a pathetic creature at the mercy of a thorny beast, who knew all the tricks to get around my carapace and prick at the fleshy bits. And I wanted it to. I surrendered to the monster, and gave it power over me, and for the remainder of my life became slave to it.
In the place of anomie I now anticipated for something. A place to charge my laptop? Some acknowledgement of my existence? Constant companionship? There was room in the closet. My bed was large enough for two. The things that mattered merely a month earlier has fallen into disregard, leaving a gaping hole to be filled by someone else’s priorities. At work, vans dropped off schools of peculiar children born several standard deviations away from normality. The misfortunes of their birth paid my bills. At dusk, I walked on the side of store-lit streets evading linked arms and cutting through conversations, nagged by the feeling that I too should be on the arms of another, or should at least walk with the purpose of boat returning to harbor.
It has been an interesting exercise, but give me back my whimsy. I’d rather spectate on the absurdities than participate in it.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara!
#00117F 