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ORGASM

There are lots of reasons women – and men – might experience anorgasmia. I’m only going to talk about one – because it’s the one that affects me. Medication. Specifically, SNRI anti-depressant medication. All medication has an effect – that’s why we prefer prescriptions to placebos. Side effects are unwanted consequences of medication and when we treat conditions pharmacologically, we weigh the pros and cons of our options. I’ve been on my current anti-depressant two years. At the lowest dose I struggled with orgasm, and at my current dose it is an impossibility.

THE DAY AFTER

It’s the day after a migraine. Yesterday was the worst in a very long time. It was once suggested I “write into” a migraine – stop whatever I’m doing and write about how I feel. I assume that person never had a migraine – writing is the last thing on earth I do when my eyes can barely open. Usually I take medication when I feel a migraine coming on, then a few hours later I’m spacey but pain free. Not so this time.

PROGRESS: NOT PERFECTION

I challenge anyone not to collapse to some degree under all the stress I experienced. The grief and trauma of losing my mother and sister, as well as my grandfather, both my in-laws and a handful of aunts and cousins – eight deaths in six years. Dealing with my teenage son running off the rails and looking dangerously ill, and taking in my adult nephew with all his issues after losing his mother. Our marriage in utter turmoil. My grandmother’s decreasing health and cognition requiring constant care and demands from me. Ending over three decades of performing and teaching music. Losing my identity as my children left home, my career was gone, and my youth was a distant past. It was a lot to deal with.

LITTLE THINGS

Over the past three years my mental state has varied in its’ health. After completely breaking apart, I have just been slowly – ever so slowly – getting better. It’s not a straight line – sometimes I went backwards – but if I look back at the overall trajectory, I can see I am a long way from where I was three years ago.

FEEDING TIME

It’s easy to know when your body needs food – physical cues are given out. We all know what they are (even when some of use choose to ignore those cues), and we know drinking a glass of water doesn’t make them go away. So feeding physical hunger is easy. And yet I do not stand alone when it comes to yearning for food regardless of physical hunger.

INNER SPIRIT

Whatever our individual faith and beliefs may be, we all have an inner spirit. That little voice of wisdom and love that talks to us. No matter how many ugly voices are talking in our heads, there is always a little voice countering the ugliness. Sometimes the destructive voices are so overpowering it’s impossible to hear – but it’s always there.

RELENTLESS POSITIVITY

And according to Susan David, we need to consider emotions in the same light. Not adorable – but as neither good nor bad. They are just emotions – all valid and no qualitative labels required. Apparently most of us are expert at either brooding or bottling our emotions, and we live in a world full of forced positivity where, “being positive has become a new form of moral correctness”.

TRANSFORMATION

Every day – every moment – of my life, I change and transform one way or another. My body constantly regenerates – most of it anyway. Some cells every few days, some every few years. And a few important cells in the brain we apparently need to treat carefully as they’re just one-timers. But overall, my body has been changing and transforming since that winning sperm first introduced itself to a welcoming ovum more than 52 years ago.

STEP BY STEP

I am still struggling with high levels of anxiety and resorting to moments of scratching at my hands – but it isn’t escalating. I have an appointment with my new psychiatrist tomorrow and managing the anxiety is going to be top of our chat list. I’m still on clonazepam and I’d like to be off it and find a longer term solution. I feel the improvements in my eating regime have contributed to my sense of fragility and vulnerability – escalating my anxiety.

TRANSITION WEEK

It’s been a wild ride. My last two days at the clinic were focused on discussing healthy ways of managing my out of control anxiety issues. I had one day of leave cancelled altogether (Sunday) as I couldn’t be trusted not to harm myself. I didn’t even trust myself. The next day was escorted leave and Tuesday – my final day as it turned out – back to full unescorted pre-discharge phase.

WEEK SEVEN

Forty three days down. Nine to go. I am ready – but glad to have these last nine days to consolidate what I’ve learned, set up support at home, invent a new life for myself, and gain the confidence to know it’s not only possible for me to recover – or even probable – but I have to believe I will recover.

WEEK SIX

g things I have to share. And it’s not because I only focus on the negative – I promise! It’s because life in the clinic is fairly routine and dull, and unless I’m having some kind of emotional crisis, there’s nothing to share. And today I’ve had no emotional crisis. I have in fact had a great (but slightly dull) day.

WEEK FIVE

Today I’m very sad. I guess it was inevitable. After 25 years of marriage I don’t normally blink an eye when spending time apart from my significant other – but this is different. We’ve been apart a month and will now be apart another 2-4 weeks. Which in the big scheme of things will become a blip on the radar, but today we’re surfing the blip.