I feel too much. 

It has always been a problem for me. It’s like someone put the dimmer switch for feelings all the way up when I was born. 

All feelings are big. Songs that make me feel happy or nostalgic make me feel so happy and nostalgic that my face begins to leak. When I feel it coming every part of me grows tense. 

It sucks to have every song you love make you cry. Even if they’re happy tears, it’s exhausting. 

It’s not just songs. Movies. Books. Poetry. A place or thing that triggers a memory. A cup of fucking coffee that is particularly good. A picture. If I had a piece of my favorite candy right now it would probably bring me to tears in under a minute.

When I was young I valued the ability to easily access a strong range of emotions. I felt that having my emotions so near to the surface was the biggest part of who I am. I kept them close. 

I’m sure you can come to your own conclusions about how that impacted my life and the lives of those around me but I’m going to tell you anyway. That’s kind of what I’m doing here after all. 

It caused me to build a life around how I feel. There has always been some consideration for thinking, but not as much as some would like. I can’t readily recall a big decision made based on emotions and instincts that I would have made differently in retrospect. 

Would I say the same about choices made on rationality and logic? No. No, I would not.

Five or so years ago I made one of those emotion-based decisions. One I thought I’d never make. One I consistently made differently for my entire life up until that point.

I started antidepressants. 

I started taking them for my anxiety disorder. I didn’t feel like I could live with it anymore. The dimmer was up so high on every feeling that I was breaking. Literally. When I think back to some of the outbursts and incidents I had leading up to that choice I marvel. 

This is also probably a moment to express my incredulous gratitude to my daughter and partner who bore the brunt of those emotional incidents. 

Going on antidepressants, despite my certainty that I didn’t have a better choice, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Taking the pill each day to experience side effects while onboarding the drug and knowing it would be weeks before I could feel any benefit. My anxiety telling me alternately that the drugs will never work and that they will work, thus fundamentally destroying everything good about me. 

There was some trial and error. We tried a few drugs before something clicked well with my brain chemistry. It was a rough time. But it was worth it. 

Fast forward to today…

I’m off my meds.

Just those meds. And going off of them was supervised by a psychiatrist and a psychologist. 

You see, since getting on those antidepressants to treat my anxiety disorder my feelings settled into a more stable place. A place that allowed me to work with those same mental health professionals to help me from a place of emotional calm where we’ve finally been able to see what else has caused me to struggle. Like ADHD and Autism. So…

Knowing more about myself. 
Being more in touch with myself. 
Having a strong meditation practice. 
A medication that works for me.
Feeling safe in my personal relationships.
Lots of therapy. 
And probably quitting drinking. 

Those things helped to smooth out some of the rougher edges of my ADHD. And all combined to make me, at the very least, curious about what my emotional baseline is without antidepressants. So I consulted with all the people who help me to make choices about my brain chemistry and we decided why not. 

We started tapering my meds back in August. By the time September ended, I had a pretty good idea that I would need to go back on my meds. 

But my brain stepped up and stepped in immediately. “Just wait,” that sneaky little anxious voice tells me. Give it another week. And she said it again and again. And I listened. 

The sneaky little anxious voice presented some compelling arguments backed up by sound logic. So I waited. And then I waited some more. And then I waited a little bit longer.

And then I emailed my psychiatrist from bed on a Monday that I had forgotten was a federal holiday and told her I needed to go back on my meds. It was one of the harder emails I’ve written in the past decade, and I’ve written a lot of hard emails.  

And then my brain spun out of control for several hours wondering why she hadn’t immediately responded to my email to say “You poor baby, you must be in so much pain, here are your meds back. Gold star for trying!”

Thankfully I have a short attention span and I forgot I was waiting to hear back from her until the next morning when I saw an email she’d sent an hour after I forgot about checking my email compulsively. She was able to get me in for an appointment later in the day, agreed with my assessment that going off of my meds did not have an acceptable outcome, and sent a prescription to the pharmacy.  

I’ve felt more in the last 6 weeks than I have in years. It’s like someone added an 11 to the end of the emotional range while I was on anti-depressants. 

I’ve cried every day. Every single day. Sometimes because I’m so fucking happy. Or anxious. Sad. Overwhelmed. Confused. Pained. Terrified. Elated. 

And I’ve learned that what I was calling “numb” would still be an overwhelming amount of feelings for… Just about anyone. 

So it appears that, for lack of a clearer description for myself, I need both the drugs that help me think clearly and also the drugs that help me feel clearly. 

I’m not upset I went off of the antidepressants. I have done so much work on myself that if there was ever a time for me to fuck around and find out, it’s now. But I am quite certain that staying off them isn’t the answer. I feel like every movie cliche of a woman who suddenly can hear peoples’ thoughts and goes mad trying to drown them out. The feelings of the world are overwhelming me and I think it would be best for all concerned if I turned them down. Not until I’m stronger. Not until I do the work. Not until I can buck up.

I am strong. I have done the work. I don’t care to spend more of my life bucking up.