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I am currently titrating down the amount of Sertraline I’ve been prescribed. So far the only consequences seem to be that my vision is less blurry, my ears are not ringing as loudly, I’m noticeably less gassy, less nauseous and I don’t have to run to the toilet ten times a day. I’m experiencing a decrease in emotional liability. I’m less susceptible to obsessive compulsive devouring of unhealthy sudo-foods. I’ve started eating fruit and vegetables again. I’m still not sleeping regularly and I’m still forgetting things left and right.
Sertraline appeared to be the least harmful SSRI that I had been subjected to yet. Lexapro made me want to kill myself. Cymbalta made me want to kill my doctor. Other SSRIs made me hallucinate. At a low dose Sertraline actually seemed promising. My former doctor kept insisting I could not possibly be experiencing any benefit from the extremely low dose I was taking. Gradually over the course of a year my prescription was increased from 25MG QD to 150MG QD. During the first four days on 150MG, my vision got so blurry I could not see to read or do my job. The ringing in my ears became unbearable. I had projectile diarrhea, nausea and very loud gas from *.
After a perfectly innocent accident I panicked and made an unfortunate series of bad judgment calls resulting in my almost being arrested. I experienced emotional liability, self-loathing and suicidal ideations. My doctor was away. Rather than fall further down the rabbit hole, I chose to decrease the amount of Sertraline I was taking. By the time my doctor returned, I was sufficiently rational to convince him that I was “safe.” For the uninitiated, if any healthcare provider decides you are “not safe” you can be hauled off and confined to a psych ward indefinitely. Before you tell your T that you $e1f #@^m or intend to kill yourself, practice counting backwards from one hundred by sevens. 

I suspect I may have Alzheimer's, but all of my symptoms are also side effects of the meds I'm on. How can I be tested while I'm still medicated? How long will it take to get off all my meds? What will be left of my brain when I do get off my meds?

My friend came over and helped me get my air conditioners in the windows: see "Disappointing a Friend." He said he would have to come back with some extra stuff to make the window mounts safer and asked if I would cook him a fish dinner. I asked if he would accept a vegetarian dinner instead. He said adding fish back into his diet has improved his health and mood. Am I being illogical in not wanting humans to eat animals in my kitchen, when I feed meat to my cats every day?

I'm not going to group T this week. The air is too bad. My lungs are loaded with scar tissue from 9/11. Last week on the way to therapy, I tripped over a subway grate that was raised one inch above the level of the sidewalk. I made a five point landing on the grate, lacerating both knees, badly bruising both hands and hitting my chin so hard, my whole head hurt. Pain shot down my neck shoulders and arms. My ears were ringing and everything went white and sparkly.

I lay there across the street from the WTC as rush hour pedestrian traffic sped past me. I almost started to cry. My dearest girlfriend was trampled so badly on 9/11 she was unable to walk for six months. I could hear a woman's voice asking "Are you alright?" I lifted myself up. I don't remember if I answered her, but I heard her say "She ok."

I thought of the commercial of the old woman who had fallen and could not get up and wondered if that would be me soon. The last time I was in the hospital, the attendant fastened a band around my wrist that said "FALL RISK." When I got to Belleview, I cleaned my knees and washed the blood off my pants. A nurse taped gauze on the cuts that were still bleeding and gave me some Band-Aids. At group therapy, two other ladies said they had also recently fallen. Our group T is young and advised us to walk with a cane. My physical therapist advised against this.

I used to be so fearless, I'd stride across dripping wet moss covered logs over ausable chasms. Now I feel so fragile I'm afraid to walk on the sidewalk. I afraid of losing my independence and winding up in a nursing home like my dearly departed sister. I was going to put this on my "Disappointing a Friend" thread, but decided it was a whole new topic. Anyone else afraid of losing their independence and being at the mercy of nurse Ratchet?

My good friend wants to visit Friday. I told him my place is a mess. He said I have a week to clean it up. I said I'd be at work all week except Wednesday when I’ll be at the WTC Environmental Health Care Clinic for the day. He just grinned.

Of course I can clean. I’m not physically paralyzed. I used to keep my apartment spotless, I cleaned the walls, I painted the ceilings, everything was organized. Then one day I came home from work to find a burglar ransacking my apartment. Everything was turned upside down, dumped out and scattered around. It made neatness seem futile. What’s the point of taking time out of my life to tidy up if someone can break in and destroy all my hard work?

Years passed and after the death of my husband it occurred to me that no matter how clean I got our apartment my dead husband was not coming back to life, so what’s the point of anything.

Three years later I woke up to sirens and my neighbors screaming bloody murder. I looked out the window to see the street lined with fire trucks. Just then a fireman stomped up the stairs shouting everybody out! The building is about to collapse! I sighed and said to myself “Well, I guess this will take care of my clutter.”

After I found a new apartment, I paid movers to go into my old apartment and box up whatever they thought was salvageable. As they were being paid by the hour, that was a big mistake. Seven years later I still have a living room full of boxes I haven’t even looked in. As I don’t have the money to replace my living room furniture anyway, I just leave it there.

The meds I’m on leave me so fatigued I just pile up mail on my kitchen table. There’s stuff there from years ago. I have nightmares about it, but when I get home from work I don’t want to touch it. I just shove out a space large enough to prepare and eat dinner. Stuff falls off the edge and gets shoved under the table. I’m so tired it hurts. Last night I didn’t even do the dishes.

When I bring this up in group T, I get told how brave I am to admit it, then we talk about the Collyer brothers (search if you dare). When I hired a professional organizer/cleaning lady, I went into such a powerful EF, I had to ask her to leave. I spent the rest of the day ugly crying and could not give a rational reason why.

Because of all the trauma attached to everything, I have made decisions I regret. When I clear a space, it looks empty to me and I feel an irresistible need to fill it up again as fast as possible with anything.

My shrink insists I connect with people. I never claimed to be an island unto myself. I used to be so hospitable; I would take time off work to get everything just right for company. I don’t have that option now because all my time off work goes to medical appointments. I’m overwhelmed and I can’t find my way out.

My dear dyslexic inner child, fear not! Within your lifetime there will be a machine that does all the spelling for you with the push of a button.  

Celebrate Creative Maladjustment & Neurodiversity.

David McCarthy head of Mad Pride Ireland said “We show the world that madness is an everyday occurrence that affects us all and can be dealt with openly, lovingly and without fear.

https://youtu.be/fv3LoU5ovbI

This Is To Mother You -by Sinead O'Connor

This is to mother you
To comfort you and get you through
Through when your nights are lonely
Through when your dreams are only blue
This is to mother you
This is to be with you
To hold you and to kiss you too
For when you need me I will do
What your own mother didn't do
Which is to mother you
All the pain that you have known
All the violence in your soul
All the ‘wrong’ things you have done
I will take from you when I come
All mistakes made in distress
All your unhappiness
I will take away with my kiss, yes
I will give you tenderness
For child I am so glad I've found you
Although my arms have always been around you
Sweet bird although you did not see me
I saw you
And I'm here to mother you
To comfort you and get you through
Through when your nights are lonely
Through when your dreams are only blue
This is to mother you

https://youtu.be/HLrVRrDFjNQ

You have asked me why the days fly by so quickly
And why each one feels no different from the last?
And you say that you are fearful for the future
And you have grown suspicious of the past

And you wonder if the dreams we shared together
Have abandoned us or we abandoned them
And you cast about and try to find new meaning
So that you can feel that closeness once again

Carry on my sweet survivor
Carry on my lonely friend
Don't give up on the dream and don't you let it end

Carry on my sweet survivor
Though you know that something's gone
For everything that matters, carry on

You remember when you felt each person mattered
When we all had to care for all was lost
But now you see believers turn to cynics
And you wonder was the struggle worth the cost

Then you see someone too young to know the difference
And a veil of isolation in their eyes
And inside you know you've got to leave them something
Or the hope for something better slowly dies

Carry on my sweet survivor
Carry on my lonely friends
Don't give up on the dream and don't you let it end

Carry on my sweet survivor
Though you know that something's gone
For everything that matters, carry on

Carry on my sweet survivor
You've carried it so long
So it may come again, carry on
Carry on, carry on


Read more: Peter, Paul & Mary - Sweet Survivor Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Unchained Melody
By The Righteous Brothers

Oh, my love, my darling
I've hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time
Time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me
Lonely rivers flow
To the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Lonely rivers sigh
"Wait for me, wait for me"
I'll be coming home, wait for me
Oh, my love, my darling
I've hungered, for your touch
A long, lonely time
Time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me
Lonely mountains gaze
At the stars, at the stars
Waiting for the dawn of the day
All alone I gaze
At the stars, at the stars
Dreaming of my love far away
Oh, my love, my darling
I've hungered, for your touch
A long, lonely time
Time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me

Spiteful day. Its idle pomp, its vainglorious show, is derided by the man whose sight has been blessed by night. The illusions of Day renown and reputation, power and profit, so magnificently glittering disperse like barren particles in the sun before the Man who looks with love upon night's death. O sink down upon me, night of love, make me forget I am alive, take me up to your bosom, set me free of the world. –Wagner

When the evening sun descends behind the mountain peak,
Will you forget that it is I who gaze with longing
Towards the place where you are?
-Omori

He who learns must suffer And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. -Aeschylus 

I can feel your smile
rest upon my face
And I can feel the warmth
and gentleness of your embrace

I can hear your laughter
it's music to my ears
And your voice still whispers to me
and wipes away my tears

I imagine you
right here with me
the one and only place
you are meant to be
This is your home
here in my heart
but fate has been unkind
and time has kept us apart
So, I imagine you
right here with me

I remember that sparkle
that dances in your eyes
when something makes you happy
just to be alive

I remember your spirit
and how it set me free
How the tender side of you
put me at ease

I imagine you
right here with me
the one and only place
you are meant to be
This is your home
here in my heart
but fate has been unkind
and time has kept us apart
So, I imagine you
right here with me

Another memorial Day and my Viet Nam Veteran husband is still dead. Why am I alive.

Whispers

Close your eyes and imagine you hear me at the top of the stairs. That space between us is only time.

Tomorrow I'm invited to go on a road trip with a good friend and a lady I haven't met yet. I'm experiencing social anxiety. I don't want to be a Debby Downer but I haven't much to say except all the medical crap I've been through. I'm under doctor's orders to be more social and I really want to go, but I'll be afraid to open my mouth. I'm out-of-sync with people who do not have PTSD and it's obvious.

I'm taking 3 hours vacation time off work today to go to the dentist. I hoping it will just be a routine cleaning, but I think a couple of my bridges may be coming loose. When I floss I think I can feel a little bit of give. I hope I'm just imagining things. The last time my dentist popped one of my bridges off it felt like getting punched in the face.  Wish me luck.

I've had other traumas before and after 9/11. I am currently enrolled in a 9/11 woman's survivor's therapy group. Earlier this week there was a brush fire in the meadowlands that filled the sky with thick black smoke obscuring the Manhattan skyline from end to end. It triggered me. I called my psychiatrist. He said it was normal for me to be triggered even though I'm compliant with my meds and attend group regularly. He said medication is not going to cure me. He said I will continue to be triggered. He said "What do you want from me, you're sick, you have a disease." I was shocked by this reply and knew not what to say. The morning after this revelation I started crying uncontrollably and calling out to my dead mother "I'm sick! I have a disease!" over and over again. I never thought of myself as diseased. Somehow PTSD doesn't sound as devastating or disabling as you're sick, you have a disease.

I saw my shrink yesterday for the last time before he goes on a two month vacation. When I told him how I broke down after what he told me, how weepy I'd been since then, how helpless and hopeless,  he emphatically denied having ever used the word disease in the entirety of his professional career. He went on about it for the length of our appointment, not leaving me space to express any other concern.

Is he gas lighting me, covering his @$$, trying to get me to believe I'm experiencing auditory hallucinations or just playing on my fears of decreased cognitive function? I was starting to make decisions, clean my apartment, care about my appearance, behave friendlier. Now I don't feel I'm worth the space I occupy. When he gets back from vacation should I give him another chance to stick me with metaphorical pins? For years I felt like a Guinea pig being switched from one med to the next. Now I feel more like a lab rat being pushed over the edge.