Uncomfortably Numb: I Need Medication But It Doesn’t Work

I’m not well. I feel fundamentally flawed. Like this world expects more of me than I can give. That in order to fit in and survive, I need to change myself, to alter the very thing that makes me, me.

Medication.

I have tried a collection of antidepressants and interventions. They saved my life but did not make it worth living. They took away everything. The pain, then the pleasure, and eventually the point.

I was left as a shell. A husk of my former existence, surviving for survivals sake. But how can I go on, hoping for hope? How can I survive just to survive?

So I stopped the medication. But six months of tumult has left my brain in a haze. I no longer know myself. I no longer know my limits. I no longer know my potential.

I am drifting. Unable to make a choice on where to take my life. What I should aim for. Or where I should go.

Any slight pressure and I break down. I become apathetic. I fall into anxious rumination. In this way I waste day after day after day. High hopes falling into a catastrophe of my own doing.

Unable to escape my mind I run. Not physically, but internally. Dissociation. These words don’t feel real. Nor the person writing them. Nothing feels real, beyond a vague sense of obligation to keep persisting. But I don’t really know why anymore. Until reality snaps itself back into focus and I’m freaking out again over something small. Repeat daily.

I find myself slowly withdrawing from everything and everyone in my life. I am afraid to leave the house. Afraid of letting people down. Afraid of doing much of anything anymore. Just afraid.

Perhaps I do need medication. Logically it makes sense. But I am afraid of that as well. The last time it almost killed me. What will happen if I take it? What will happen if I don’t?

I hate the feeling that in need to alter myself to survive. That me, as I am, is not capable. But it seems like it is the truth hey? It seems like who I am is incompatible with who the world needs me to be to survive.

Thus I am forced to change myself to survive. That, or accept that I will be miserable for a decent percentage of the time. That I will melt down often. That I may not make it.

Really it is a crisis of meaning. What is the point of all this? I wish I was religious or fundamentally convinced about something external to myself - at least then I would have a code to follow. A set of rules that would guide me. A distant mountain to climb. But unfortunately, I do not. I don’t know what is out there, but it isn’t speaking to me, at least not in a way I can comprehend.

I do have my poetry. Writing is the only time I feel like I am free. That I can lose myself in the moment. That perhaps I can tap into something beyond myself.

The muse speaks through me and asks me to share. These words. And everything else. To put myself out there for the world to see.

Or that’s what I tell myself at least. Perhaps all of this is just a cry for help. One that may never be answered - or perhaps it is the help that I will never be able to accept.

Do I even want to heal? Do I think I can? That I am worthy? Or perhaps I’ve felt broken for so long that I have identified myself as mentally Ill. Who am I beyond my pain? These are question I may never discover an answer to.

Back to meaning. Back to the point. Back to contemplating medication. More questions. Why take it? What will it help me with really? What will it turn me into? How can I, broken as I am, decide what I will become? Won’t that decision be based on broken logic?

I just want the pain to stop. I just want to rest. I just want to feel safe. I just want to know how to actually live this life. I just want to know myself.

I find myself sitting, writing these words, after once again breaking down. Over nothing. Pushed once again over the limit that is shrinking daily. I am embarrassed. A pathetic, worthless man, unable to make it through a day of objective safety, safely. What a joke.

There is no point to this post. I just had to express my mind in this moment - far healthier than any alternatives I could have chosen.

Spilling ink to save me from the brink and all that.

Tell me dear reader, if you are there, if you exist, should I try another medication? If so, how can I overcome the fear of doing so and the philosophical quandary of a the thing that is broken (my brain) deciding to change itself to become something else?

---

This post was inspired by the book, Augmented Realities: Human Poetry x A.I. Art