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Untethered Heart

This past week has been challenging. My psychiatrist had trialed me on a new med a few weeks ago for my anxiety. "Anxiety, depression or manic episodes...what's the worst at the moment?", she asked me. 
"Anxiety. Definitely the anxiety", I said. So off to the pharmacy for a prescription of Clonidine, otherwise known as Catapres. For two weeks I was on it, with little effect other than drowsiness. I texted my psychiatrist to let her know. "How about we try something different. What about an SSRI?", she says. My brain on red alert is ringing alarm bells. I messaged her back reminding her that I don't tolerate them so well. "What if a try Valdoxan? I tolerated that okay," I say. "It's doesn't do much for anxiety," she says. "How about we try Efexor?" 
And that is where my week started. I lasted three days, before I pulled the plug. Intense jaw pain, along with ear pain . Unable to eat, nausea, dizziness. The jaw pain on top of everything else, done me in. I just couldn't bear it, and no pain meds seemed to help. I feel like a failure yet again. Never can get passed the first week or two with SSRIs. Another medication trial down the drain. And now, aswell as anxiety, I feel incredibly depressed. I don't know what to do anymore. Life seems like one giant boulder that I am constantly trying to push up a hill, only for it to roll right back over me. I feel defeated. I feel not "right". I'm planning on taking my usual antipsychotic today or tomorrow and see if it levels the playing field for me. As it usually seems to. Old faithful. I had ambitious plans to travel to the UK in mid August to see my mentor and friend. She's the closest thing I have to a mother figure in my life now. Apart from my Aunty. I feel a deep sense of foreboding about those plans now. I couldn't possibly go, knowing I'm not in my right mind. It would be reckless. Halfway across the other side of the world, mentally unstable. Living out of a suitcase. Can I get myself well enough to still go? Can I even save enough money to go? I'm still struggling to keep my savings from being chipped away by regular life. Life feels like all encompassing grief and overwhelm. Everything is overwhelming. Messages from friends. Emails. School runs. Phonecalls from therapists. Phonecalls from teachers. Phonecalls from psychiatrist and psychologist and doctor. Every one's opinions and ideas of what I should and shouldn't be doing. And by the way, your parents are dead. My parents are dead. I watched them die. I held my mother's hand as she died. I kissed and smelled my father's hair over and over again. Afraid I would forget his smell. I couldn't even begin to explain or express how close I was to my parents. I have a photo of them in my car on the sun visor. A photo of my Mum in all her cheeky glory.  Somehow her photo reminds me to laugh and take life by the horns and give absolutely no fucks about what anyone else thinks. But I'm heartbroken. Most days I just feel a constant internal sense of doom, panic, like my life engine is idling too high, agitated, nervous, jittery. Trying to keep a lid on it always. The only peace I find is when I'm asleep. And then sometimes my dreams unsettle me. I don't feel safe. From myself. From my mind. There seems there is no rest from my mental anguish. My heart and mind feel untethered. The only thing keeping me going is the knowledge that I don't want to transfer pain and grief to my children. This suffering, in time, will come to teach me something. That's what it's supposed to do, right? Yet here I remain stuck in it, all the while the pressures of the world won't let me be. 

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