by cmsellers » Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:22 pm
I finally got the meds I know help, somewhat, two weeks ago. One of which is a new class of antidepressant, which I remember improving my mood slightly last time I was on it, and which in insurance didn't want to cover because it's new and expensive but I finally got them to cover.
"Helps somewhat" is way better than other antidepressants, whose effects ranged from "makes all the symptoms of depression worse" and "increases anxiety" through "doesn't seem to affect my mood but fucks up my sleep" all the way to "doesn't seem to be doing anything, for good or bad." Which is why I spent so much time trying to get this one again.
Well, I've been on it for about three weeks. And initially, I was only noticing the negative side effects. It wreaks havoc on almost the entire length of my GI tract for the first two weeks, and though I remember it improving after about two weeks last time, as it did this time, I've still been getting frequent indigestion this past week, and still am. I hadn't noticed any mood effects and was thinking "if my indigestion doesn't improve, I'll go off this one too."
But then, earlier this week, I realized that one of what I thought was my weakest points actually wasn't that weak in a professional setting. And today, I realized it's actually a strong point in a professional setting. All my life, I've been looking at one failure in eighth grade as proof that I'm shitty at that. To paraphrase Harry Chapin Carpenter in "Mr. Tanner": I did not see how well I did, I just saw the flaws.
And earlier this week, I was freaking out, because I went to a panel on the line of work I'm trying to get into, and everyone without a postgraduate degree had taken like a year to learn this stuff. And I was freaking out, because after grad school, I didn't spend a year learning this stuff. But today, I realized that I already knew all the stuff they said they spent a year teaching themselves, because I spent a year before grad school learning this stuff.
It feels like I've spent my life wearing dirt-colored glasses which I've suddenly taken off.