Day 68: Stagnation?

It's not that my lack of posting indicates that I don't have any thoughts, or anything to say about the weaning process, currently. Mostly, it reflects my intense laziness/lack of motivation to do so. Of course, my lack of motivation and laziness have some pretty solid connections to depression et al in my life, so I'm not sure that this is particularly surprising.

After my last weaning post (some 20 days ago), I got a lot of love from friends, and positive feedback/messages that slowing down is not failure, and that I have been successful in reducing to half my original dosage. This also reminded me of my doctor's comments that she recommends a slow weaning so that her patients can maintain a sense of confidence with each reduction. And I realized that I was trying to speed through weaning despite my lack of confidence, and that this was a big sign to SLOOOOW DOWN. And so, I have. I've been at 10mg/day since March 25th, so approximately a month and a half. And having said that, I feel that little niggling annoying impatience, telling me that it is time to get a move on, already.

I had a good conversation with my counselor a couple of week ago about this, and I realize I've wrapped up a lot of meaning into this weaning process. There are reasons both for me to want to finish this as soon as possible, and reasons for me to linger here at 10mg for as long as I can. I am impatient with this process, because the sooner I am finished, the sooner I feel I've accomplished a Big Thing. This Big Thing, I realize, has to do with the last 5 and a half years of my life. No, in reality, this Big Thing has to do with my whole life. I have painstakingly struggled since childhood with this demon that is depression (or probably more accurately, dysthymia). Dealing with these kinds of thought patterns and emotions since third or fourth grade, I'd come to accept as a teenager that perhaps this was just my personality. The cripplingly low self esteem, the semi-frequent desire to do self-harm, the nightly crying spells, all of these were just part of who I was.

And then... I hit what I believe was one of the worst major depressive episodes of my life, just a few months before my 17th birthday. My long-distance, long-term, first-ever, this-guy-is-totally-The-One boyfriend in BC had just started his first year of university, and then had his mom die rather quickly of cancer after a lengthy remission. The person I'd been using as my emotional anchor fell completely apart on me, a country away. And through my own grief, and overwhelming guilt that I could not make things better for him, I began to spiral deeper and deeper into the episode that eventually got me to my family doctor for my first prescription for an SSRI (Celexa, which I later abandoned due to the fact that it made it impossible for me to remain conscious for a majority of the day), and several months later resulted in my (obviously) failed suicide attempt.

From the beginning of this depressive episode, through my relationship-drama-filled and often-pained first year of university... from my subsequent isolating move to BC to be with that boyfriend, and to my eventual break-up and continued living with this now-ex, watching his life fall apart and his several suicide attempts from under the same roof... from my eventual emotional breakdown to my additional depressive episode of near-constant suicide ideation... I don't know if I ever foresaw my slow, but sure and steady improvement in emotional regulation, finding effective coping mechanisms, or my starting to figure out who I am and how that is okay.

So, all of these extremely painful memories and experiences of the last several years? Maybe, maybe it means I'm "better" (whatever that means), and maybe it means I've moved passed all of it, if only (if only) I accomplish this Big Thing. My insides tell me that maybe I can feel secure that once I'm done with SSRIs, I've proved to myself that the past, and that part of my life, is done, gone, and buried. I think that this Big Thing is at least, in some part, a way I'm trying to prove to myself that the bad stuff is behind me, and that the future is shiny and will not feature any more of the crippling depressive episodes of my past.

My mind sees weaning off of Paxil as a great gain, meaning there is also potential for great loss. I fear that my failure at weaning off of my meds means something more than having to refill a prescription every three months, and more than a frustration at chemical dependency. Despite my best efforts to stave off black and white thinking, I can't help but think that a failure in weaning may mean I am doomed to the depressive episodes and former life that I have worked so hard to stave off. These fears make it easy to want to delay and delay and delay my next reduction.

With these realizations of the value I've loaded into weaning, I am trying to re-frame and reinterpret in a way that does not set myself up for emotional failure. I know that in reality, whether I effectively wean off of medication permanently or not, that I will hit lower points than I am comfortable with. In a way, I was correct as a teenager; my dysthymia is a part of who I am. It does not define me, but it is something I will have to work with, likely, for the rest of my life. And I am glad that I am now in a place where I'm (mostly) looking forward to this whole "rest of my life" thing.