Crazy Pills

Those that followed my blog in the tumblr days will remember my dance with the crazy pills.  To summarize, although I had a happy uneventful childhood with no trauma, I started getting wicked anxiety after having kids.  I didn't recognize it as anxiety as it just kind of crept up and became who I was.  I started getting physically affected by the stress I was under constantly so the doctor prescribed me my first dose of anti-anxiety/anti-depressants.  I hadn't realized how far I'd stepped from feeling like myself until I was on the medication.  I happily popped that pill every day until I decided to try for a baby with Cameron.  I spent a fun-filled 3 months coming off the medicine and then had a predicted roller coaster of emotions during the pregnancy but I felt pretty normal.  I felt confident that maybe I didn't have to get on the pills again.  Everything in my life was perfect, what did I have to worry about?  Turns out you don't need anything to worry about to still be crazy.

Around 6 weeks postpartum I started to get irritable.  I started to cry more.  Pick fights more.  Expect more from everyone to insane levels and then blow small events out of the stratosphere of proportion.  The biggest victim in this story is Cameron, followed closely by the older kids.  I could feel a physical shadow coming over me.  Like there was a layer of thickness over my brain that was exhausting me and making it impossible to reach happiness and joy.  Just like before, my body physically responds to stress.  My body hurt and my head ached.  I wake up in the early morning feeling like I'm in fight or flight mode without any reason.  My brain swirled over topics to find things to worry about.  Even stressful things that get resolved left an aftershock of stress reverberating through my subconscious.  So I spent several weeks winding myself tighter and tighter with emotional breakdowns several times a week .  My husband could somehow bring me back to the surface each time, even if just for awhile.  Finally I made the call to the doctor.

I'm three weeks in on crazy pills and feeling much better.  It's always so glaringly apparent how much I need them once I start them again.  I'm not preparing myself for the death of everyone around me anymore.  When my mom hadn't called me after her plane landed, I managed to not check the news for airplane crashes.  When I forgot to send an email at work, I convinced myself that no major harm would come from sending it in the morning.  When the voice told me "if you don't worry about it, it will happen..." I was able to remember that what will happen will happen with or without my worry.

Coming out of this and back into myself again, I can't help but feel totally overwhelmed with love for my husband.  He loves the parts of me that I can hardly stand to live with. I'm so incredibly lucky to have such a rock when I'm so spinny and crazy. With some Cameron love and a little bit of zoloft, I think I'll make it.