Excuse me for a second while I cover my mouth, run to the trash and puke. No, this isn’t about politics ALTHOUGH YOU WERE ABOUT TO SLAP ME, WEREN’T YOU? Ha ha! Tricked ya! See! I can be unpredictable! Although I’ve already capitalized nine words in this paragraph, so I guess I still have a long way to go.
No, it’s withdrawal from Cymbalta. Many of you warned me about this, but I didn’t think I’d ever go off of it. It was working, and I was feeling normal. Except… those dreams. Those hours-long, exhausting nightmares that seemed to be another life I was living while asleep. Murders, mazes, friends cheating on spouses, SOMEONE KIDNAPPING BRAD PITT. You know I wouldn’t ever joke about something like that.
I’d wake up in the morning having not rested at all, and Jon would carefully place his hands on my shoulders and whisper delicately, “You look crazy.”
That’s therapy speak for Shit Needs Fixin’.
So I called my doctor and said, listen, I’m living two lives: one when I’m awake and one when I’m asleep. It’s exhausting. Also, Brad Pitt is still missing.
And he was like, think about the blogging material! And I was like, sir, I appreciate the suggestion, but I live with Baby Rambo Armstrong. I have bite marks on three of my fingers. Two days ago she pooped in the tub. And now she’s so adamantly against wearing a diaper that we have to duct tape it to her stomach. Someone needs to find Brad Pitt so that I can have enough energy to deal with the content I already have.
So our plan is to have me taper off of it ever so slowly. Because if I miss a day my body feels like it’s eating itself from the inside out. I get violently nauseated and dizzy. My head fills up with electrical zaps. I twitch uncontrollably. Even on a lower dosage my body revolts in such a way that I fell down a flight of stairs on Friday afternoon. Because I was looking down, but I was still seeing up. For Halloween I was The Woman Tapering off of Cymbalta.
It was so sexy.