I should have probably started writing this earlier but I slightly hyper-fixated on getting this new look sorted out; isn't neurodiversity grand? Anyway, this is going to be a bit of a blog post of correlational & causational... Stuff. As you can see, I've had a bit of a "glow-up" around here & it's all related. I've tried to get a bit of an old-school LiveJournal vibe going on. Nostalgia & LJ-Cutting myself as a midlife crisis maybe? Meh. Don't care. I've enabled comments and stuff too; feel free to let me know what you think about any of this drivel I write.
The main reason I've been able to write anything at all is a change in my antidepressant medication I think. I've been persisting with Sertraline since before Christmas and my experiences haven't been the best. I've had pretty much constant insomnia since I started taking it, and the beneficial effect it should have had tamping the MDD pendulum has been negligible at best.
The GP ignored the raft of peer-reviewed evidence that Sertraline causes sleep disruption and told me to persist, upping the dose every time. With every dosage increase, my ability to function was equally diminished. I eventually stood my ground & told them it wasn't working. Again "Oh, you need to be on it a little bit longer, give it another couple of weeks." At this point I'd been on the maximum dosage for a month & there wasn't a day that passed where I'd not end up wondering what the best exit strategy was. During a Zolpidem (Ambien) drugged evening, I told my nesting partner that I was going to kill myself with helium. The GP gave not shit one about the ideation; he was rude, dismissive and combative. He eventually, begrudgingly switched me to Citalopram 20, admonishing me that "There's no guarantee things will improve, and in fact they'll probably get worse and I won't change your medication for another 3 months." Oh, how wrong he was.
The difference between Sertraline & Citalopram has been nothing short of seismic. I noticed the difference from pretty much the first dose; I could think a little clearer, the anhedonia and inability to do anything but coast along on my ADHD medication started to shift. After 3 doses I've pretty much stopped crying & the ideation has evaporated. In the last 3 days I have baked and decorated a cake & done a fairly big chunk of housework. I had a day that was borderline manic yesterday and I got a lot done. Today has been lower-energy, but I hyper-fixated the whole day on getting this blog just so, so I could write this. Is it perfect? No. Anehdonia has been replaced with... Nothing. I don't feel anything; I'm not happy or sad, I'm not even apathetic. I care, but I feel about as emotional as flatpack furniture. For a Limerant like me whose feelings are nearly always cranked up to 11, it's a weird place to be. I don't like it, but I like the alternative less.
I feel like I should talk about the previous post. I think I need to tell the story, all of it. I don't want there to be acrimony & I don't want there to be any cause to be partisan over this. Most people didn't know him. He isn't a villain, neither of us are. We're both victims & survivors. I don't want anybody to be able to identify him in any meaningful way, so I'll be referring to him as Madder. That's Madder the colour, not the mental state. Other names have been changed for the sake of privacy.
We met on Boopnet just before lockdown happened. Poly was a new thing to me at the time & I wasn't really looking to meet anybody. Their profile mentioned they were skittish and not wanting to send photos & things straight away, which was fine. They seemed lonely & that's something I had in common with them, so I sent them a message & we started talking. We hit it off straight away, pretty much. It felt like I'd known them forever. We talked, we did the things furries do and we got closer. We started to talk every day & I started to look forward to seeing them & we got closer. I don't quite remember when we both admitted feelings, but it happened. They always had a bit of a darkness about them; something melancholy, moody. They'd mention that they didn't really plan on staying around in that very final kind of sense and that there were some things I needed to know about them; but it was hard to talk about when the mood was good. They eventually told me one of the most devastating things I think I've ever heard, in the most matter-of-fact "Well, that happened." kind of way.
"My mum was murdered by someone my sibling met online."
They went on to tell me that the relationship between the sibling and the murderer had gone sour, and the sibling had gone back to live at home. One morning, on his way to work, the murderer stopped at the house, assaulted & repeatedly stabbed their mother & left like nothing had happened. I was floored. I didn't want to hear this in text, I wanted to be there to hold them, protect them. I told them I wanted to know, but only when we were together. That was a conversation we never ended up having.
We argued, a lot. They would get closer & pull back. They asked me to push them. If I wanted to spend anything more than screen time with them, I had to push. When I did, when I challenged & tried, it was always wrong. I ended up writing it down as a sort of story; the princess isolated in their tower with a door that opened from the inside. Every day her suitor would sit by the door & tell them stories, show them pictures of the world outside & hope they'd one day share it with him. Every attempt was met with negativity, silence or anger and I'd back off. Things would be frosty for a while, and we'd eventually make up. When they were angry, they'd lash out at me. On the good days I was the best & they needed me. On the bad days, they'd tell me I was coercive, that I was the worst kind of person and I just wanted to hurt them (paraphrased). We'd have it out, and they'd say they didn't mean it, but it'd always happen again.
Holidays & special occasions were always a nightmare. I'm a sentimental git at the best of times, and I always wanted to get them something. They absolutely wouldn't let me send anything to the house, it'd involve me knowing where they lived and that was an absolute no (something that never changed in the whole time we were together). They very begrudgingly let me send them things from Amazon to a locker in a supermarket, but it was always made absolutely clear that this was a nuisance and they weren't acquiescing willingly. I got some grand, idiotic idea in my head that I'd send them a heart-shaped pendant; something to say "you have my heart, you never have to worry." I found a parcel drop place near to the supermarket and I sent it there... They refused to pick it up. They were furious. I was here alone when that parcel came back to me eventually. It broke me into pieces, but I put it in the cupboard in the hope that one day I'd be able to give it to them.
It was about that time that they went away for the first time. We fell out and they disappeared for six months, give-or-take. They posted on the social media site that they thought they might've made the biggest mistake of their lives.
I'll carry on with this another time. it's 0220 and I'm tired.
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