Listening to my own advice

Things are not as good this last week. I've been short-tempered, sullen, tired and unmotivated. Sunday was stressful: I chaired a meeting that an ad hoc committee I was not a part of had planned. I kept getting hit with surprises, which I like even less than usual when I'm chairing. I had my own 5-minute spiel to give and I felt inarticulate while giving it.

But all that was okay. When I got home, I had a bummer of an interaction with Nimue that seemed to have started me into my... well, "tailspin" is too strong a word, maybe "unplanned descent" is more accurate. We had several such spates throughout the week, mostly recently last night.

All week long I've been wondering to what extent, if any, this is due to my on-going unplanned withdrawal from Prozac. When I last posted about this, I once again had some slight hope that I had gotten through to my mail-order pharmacy, Caremark. A couple of days after that post, I got a call saying my order had finally shipped. But then a week later, I got another call saying they couldn't ship because they needed more information from my doctor. I let this person really have it and wound up hanging up on her because she wouldn't listen to what I was saying and insisted on talking over me when I was trying to speak. The next day I got the non-Prozac portions of my order filled at a local pharmacy, which of course cost me more than getting them mail-order would have. But at least I got them. I figured I had proven by then I didn't really need the Prozac and even was better off without it (mostly due to sleeping so much better). Or so I thought.

Then in reflecting this morning, I had the thought that for the preceding few weeks, back to the beginning of August, I had finally started to have "the courage to change [some of] the things I can," addressing some ongoing issues in our household that have left me feeling out of control of my life for years. Not that I ever expect my life to be manageable. But I do feel like we ought to be able to keep strangers—to me anyway—from walking into our house unbidden when no one's home, to not have leftover foods lying around the living room for days at a time, to not have dirty dishes pile up for over a week on the kitchen counters, to not have piles of cigarette butts and other smoking trash littering the entrance to our house, etc. I had begun to address some of these issues on my own, without Nimue's help or cooperation, even with her active opposition at times, despite the fact that her children are responsible for these things.

But this last week, I have once again started feeling that the price I pay for such efforts in terms of my relationship with Nimue is too high. I've got a real bad case of the "f--- its." The Rock, my sponsor, is very sympathetic to this view of things. He thinks I tolerate far too much abuse and keeps telling me not to be such a doormat. But then I know that he's got issues that cloud his judgment when it comes to relationships with women.

When my therapist first recommended going onto an anti-depressant, I was skeptical. I told him I thought my depression was situational rather than clinical. He responded that if the anti-depressant improved my mood, by definition it was a clinical depression. Up till now I've pretty much bought that. But all along I've wondered about it. Defining something a certain way doesn't make it really so. Who's to say that a depression can't be caused by the situation and still be helped by chemicals?

Or am I just playing my lifelong head game of finding the reasons to justify whatever point of view I prefer? I don't know. My inclination is just to muscle my way through the situation and "force" myself to feel better.

Funny, that's what I keep hearing from Mr Riches-to-Rags. And I keep telling him that's not how it works. Maybe I should be listening to my own advice.