List of things that I've done that are good for me today:

-Yoga home practice

-Healthy meals

-Neti Pot

-Got things done at work

-Took omega 3s

-Friendly plan-making with challenging roommate

-Made a few phone calls outside my immediate sphere of comfort

-Walked the dog

-Wrote blog entry!

I am in the process of going off of lexapro. I stopped the seroquel in september and as of about a week and a half ago I started inching off the lexapro. I am down to every other day. For the first time in two years I am going completely off meds. It feels kinda scary. Last time I went off I had some interesting hallucination experiences and when I decided to go on them again two years ago my head was engorged with thoughts of suicide.

My personal follow-through is horrific. Really. I can hardly commit to brushing my teeth every day, which is why making a commitment to taking care of myself enough to battle the depression seems so... giant. But I can commit to taking that pill every day. That pill that is supposed to fix my head. The pill that also scares me. I feel pissed off that I can’t handle my shit on my own, that my body isn’t capable of just existing without the help of medicine and large quantities of sheer determination. I don’t want to need meds, or bloody health insurance. I don’t even want to need routine or to take care of myself at all. It frequently seems like such a waste of energy, inefficient, tedious. And yet the fact that I can’t just be ok saps so much more energy that everything just goes to waste.

Two extremes from an interesting conversation with one of my support people on my fears about going off meds (who happens to also be my lover, a bit of a jerk, and perhaps the only person I ever have the huevos to argue with):

“Get over yourself. They have science to figure out how these things impact people. It isn’t as if you are the first person in the universe to stop taking this medication. And you going off of it doesn’t mean your world is going to be turned upside down.” (and then I get mad and tell lover that they aren’t trying very hard to be understanding and that they haven’t experienced themselves or experienced me dealing with being suicidal.)

After a conversation on activism and depression: “You know what it means to do whatever it takes to make something happen. If this is something you truly want [to go off meds] then you will do what you need to in order to make it work.” (at which point I have an ah-ha moment and decide to put the energy -instead of the drugs- to work at making myself better)