I have been meaning to write about what these last two weeks have been like for me since I upped my dosage of Celexa from 20 mg to 30 mg, but when I sit down to explain everything, all I can come up with is a hodgepodge of emotive descriptors, such as anxious and defeated and scared.

I want to have more to say than feeling words. I want to be able to tell you what I have done, realizations I have come to, behaviours I am hoping to change, but I have got bupkis. This is not at all surprising, really, because I am still making it through that first month after a dosage change, but don’t we always want to have more to show for all our hard times than orange stains on our fingers from cheez puffs and a dwindling supply of facial tissues? I know I do.

Yesterday, I was setting out cartons of asian takeout and chopsticks and whatnot for the Palinode and me, and you would have thought that I was waiting for someone to beat me by the way I was behaving. My anxiety was so high that I was fumbling with everything, and each time I dropped or bumped something, I would jump or squeak or issue an apology. I ended up reaching such a fever pitch that the Palinode took to patting my arm and saying You’re doing really well, really good, don’t worry, you’re doing fine.

Who needs this kind of support to get through setting out utensils and takeout? Apparently, I do, and it is frustrating. I always have high hopes when I change dosages or medications, so when the road to wellness is bumpy, I take that as a personal failure. I become certain that I am weak, that I am less intelligent than I thought I was, that I am inherently unlovable, that this is all there will ever be for me. I know this line of thinking is not entirely realistic, but even so, these ideas take me by the nose.

If this scenario works out the way I hope, this is just the storm before the calm. My body has to take its (sweet) time to adjust to its new chemical configuration; I have to adjust to not being the kind of anxious depressive I was when my experience of the medication (hopefully) evens out. Transitions are rarely easy, even when they do not involve psychological illnesses, so I just have to keep in mind that I am in transition and try to stay patient.

Is there a drug for patience?

(also posted on Schmutzie’s Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come)