Yesterday was one of those bad days that merits a misery ranking comparable to the thirty minutes after my water broke in the delivery room when I thought the baby was going to come out of my body via my back teeth and knees simultaneously. When Jon got home from work I had him fix us a gin and juice so that I could relax a little bit, and part of me wanted him to throw it in my face so that maybe I would wake up and everything would have been a dream. But I know better than to waste precious alcohol like that, and even if I had given in to that inclination I would have instructed him to aim directly for my open mouth.
We took an early evening walk with the baby and the dog to take advantage of the dry summer air, something we always long for when there’s three feet of soiled snow covering the sidewalks. We had almost made it back to the house safely when we ran into a neighbor whom we rarely see. She has a two and a half year old daughter, and looking as if she was going to give birth in less than a month I asked her when the next one was due. WITNESS EXAMPLE A: How to make your really shitty day a total disaster on par with nuclear detonation.
She pulled the delicate sides of her camisole over her protruding belly and said out of the side of her clenched mouth, “I’m not pregnant.” Jon took a dramatic step away from me and let out a moan, and almost as if on cue Leta started channeling her Polygamist ancestors and screaming in tongues. The neighbor continued, “In fact, I practice ballet every day. I guess I need to try harder.”
At that point I just started banging on the dagger in my stomach and every word that came out of my mouth after that had no decipherable consonants or vowels, just a bunch of plaintive wailing you might hear from a decaying corpse you’ve tried to hide in your backyard. When we got home Jon tried to change the subject and he asked what I wanted to have for dinner. I looked at him stunned as if he hadn’t just seen me gorge myself on both my feet.
Yesterday wouldn’t have been so awful if it weren’t for the fact that I’m going through the horrible transition from one depression medication to another, and I’m starting to think that switching medications maybe wasn’t such a good idea. I’M ACCUSING WOMEN OF BEING PREGNANT WHEN THEY ARE NOT. CORRECTLY MEDICATED MINDS DO NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN. My experience last year in a mental hospital was not a pleasant one by any means, but the one good thing about checking myself in was that my doctor was allowed to prescribe me therapeutic amounts of drugs immediately. So I started feeling better instantly, not in six to eight weeks. Who goes around taking medication for an illness knowing that they have to wait two months to start feeling better? CRAZY PEOPLE, THAT’S WHO.
(insert eerie cackle here)
Anyone who suffers from another illness might die in the span of six to eight weeks if their medication didn’t start working. And here’s the clincher: this new medication may not ever start working. That’s just a benefit of the disease, that and the ability to throw household objects over fifty feet with stellar aim. I have to endure the withdrawal of coming off one medication and the hellish uncertainty that the new one may not ever take effect. Excuse the pun, but this is just madness.
The doctor that I see now is not the doctor that I saw in the hospital (he only works with patients who reside in the hospital). During my last appointment I told my new doctor that I was feeling fine, great even, but that I’m perpetually tired and I can’t concentrate for long periods of time. He suggested I switch medications and that’s when I should have run for the hills. Why mess with a good thing? Show me a mother who isn’t tired all the time, someone not addicted to speed.
Right now we’re in a holding pattern, sort of a wait and see where we go from here. I say we because Jon has to field my calls during the day where he just says, “Yes, yes, okay, sure,” even though he can’t understand a single word through the wad of snot in the back of my throat. Today is a better day, and that’s how I’m going to measure things for the next little while. It’s how a lot of us who suffer through this have to measure our entire lives.