Detox to happiness

The first few pills I took projected me into a physical and emotional tailspin. Dizzy and nauseated, I recall living those first few painful weeks shielded from my own misled thoughts and feelings, clouded in a trance-like stupor. They were wonderfully numbing, coating the pain throughout my scarred body like aloe. A simple solution to my pain, no larger than my pinkie, provided by my doctor to help ease me through a life-altering transition.

I toted a blanket to work with me for the first two weeks, napping throughout my lunches. I forwent the lunch time gatherings of my co-workers, pulling the blanket taut around my face and allowing myself to submit to the safety the blanket afforded me. The day a panic attack shook my body from it's trance like state, I allowed myself to be whisked away from my cubicle, exposed to the world once again, if only for a few minutes, before being guided into the safety of my mother's waiting car.

For eight months I have held the tiny orange bottle tight in my hand every morning and listened with satisfaction to the popping sound made when I upset the lid. Faithfully, I have chugged liquids and ate a nibble of food as not to upset my stomach. Curled upon the couch were days spent when I forgot to re-fill a prescription. Tremors and dizzy spills wrecked my body with such intensity, that much of my day would be spent praying to the porcelain god for an end to my madness.

Eight months I have allowed myself to be cradled and carried along, dazed and pleased inside my drugged haze.

And then I heard an upsetting story told by a friend.

The genuineness of the story, the raw scathed feelings of a young girl who was molested by a family member were confessed over a plate of spaghetti and a bottle of cheap red wine. My insides shook with sadness, my heart pounded with anger and my throat constricted at the confession of my friend. I sat as a bubble of sorrow built in my stomach and started its journey upwards. I waited as I felt the bubble expand in my throat and stall. I blinked back dry eyes. The bubble sat lodged in my windpipe as I willed the tears to appear. They refused and as I sat drenched in pain for another, a new painful revelation overtook me.

I haven't cried.

In eight months I have lived somewhat in denial for my loss, my son's loss and the pain that I know the future is keeping for us. I have allowed myself to be swept up in a numbing tide and carried out to an island where pain does not exist.

That night I sat on the edge of my bed and fingered the label attached to side of the orange bottle that had been my crutch for so long. Gently, I stripped away the label, peeling away the information that contained my lifeline and prescribed happiness. I discarded the directions to mask emotions and embraced another important decision.

Today is only the beginning of the first week of detoxing from anti-depressants. Though I am grateful for the many nights I was rescued from drowning in a sea of pity, I am ready to live un-medicated and vulnerable to myself and subsequent emotions. I can embrace tomorrow because no longer is tomorrow shadowed in dread.

It will be okay because I will be okay.