A How Are You Interrogation

Posted on March 16, 2006 in Depression Medications Psychotropics Routine

I’ve been a little short on the helpful comments lately. Real life support groups have sucked and there was that problem with Clogger. Two people have, for no apparent reason, deleted comments of mine and the people who I thought might have whacked me with the Salmon of Knowledge for off-color remarks have chuckled merrily and kept being friends. The world is as it always was, a confusing place where much that happens beyond the mind cannot be explained. I go on even though I don’t get Reality.

Right now, I am killing time between my morning three pages of writing and going to the drug store to fill some prescriptions. Tuesday was the psychiatrist with whom I plotted to get off Xanax and yesterday was the endocrinologist with whom I shared my studies of the little red bead that wells up from my finger. This being sick with too many things — heart, lungs, pancreas, teeth, brain — demands that I keep running imaginary scopes down every orifice, through every vein and artery.

One of the worst parts is that following last year’s misadventure and subsequent hospitalization, I can’t talk about this without worrying my wife. I must keep secrets from her every time I bring a doctor my list of complaints. She doesn’t see the positive parts — the determination not to let my illnesses stop my heart, my lungs, my pancreas, my brain — only the enumerations. It’s like putting your entire focus in the Book of Genesis on the Begats. The silence I must adopt in the face of her fear leads me to writhe in withdrawal. I wish to be no St. Anthony of Egypt; I don’t want to face my demons alone or deny my angels.

Every now and then, I have to come out and say “These things suck big time” just as I have to come out and say “I did these things and I am accountable for them.” Marking the bad things isn’t a surrender any more than noticing big rocks on the road is. And I hate that cliche, that trite speech of mine. Even that saying that things suck, sucks. Oh, I don’t know where I am with this, except alone and destined for a “how are you” interrogation in the evening.