Pills

I filled the prescription I was carrying around for a while- a week or two I think- I can’t keep track of time that well. Maybe it was just a few days. I feel torn about having the pills again. I took them when I was younger, but the last few years I’ve changed a lot. I tried to have more perspective and empathy. I learned to ride the ups and downs more gracefully. I’m still moody but I directed my moodiness by writing and volunteering and exercising. I liked my life without the pills. I painted, I wrote furiously, I took improv classes.

Now I’ve been on the pills for about a week, and I feel clogged up. I can’t just cry. When I’m talking with someone and should be crying I get this weird smile on my face. It’s like a frozen grimace, and I can’t squeeze out any tears. I’m going to give the pills another week and see how I feel, but I’m not sure I’m going to stick with it. Is dulling the pain worth the sacrifices of not being able to write easily, and not being able to relieve myself with tears. Now instead of being filled with sawdust I feel like I have cotton in my tears ducts and my ears and stuffed in the spaces around my heart.

In the beginning I was so amazed by my own pain. Sometimes I felt like I was stepping back and watching it overcome me, like you’d watch a thunderstorm roll in. But I’m less impressed now, and less afraid. Maybe I don’t need the pills after all. It’s hard to tell how I’m feeling anymore.

I went to my book club last night for the first time since Tommy Jr was born. The women in the group are so wonderful and supportive and smart and compassionate. It felt so good to be with them again and drink wine and just be girls. They let me talk about Tommy as much as I wanted, and they never acted uncomfortable or impatient. I feel so lucky to have the friends and family and spouse that I do. Throughtout this ordeal I have felt pretty understood, which I know is a rarity.

I wrote the other day that I felt like myself again. But really I think I’m becoming more comfortable with my new self. And I can tell that my new self isn’t that far off from my old self.