Reclaiming my Balance

Serotonin, dopamine, ephinephrine, norephinephrine.

It's amazing how thoroughly our bodies listen to those neurotransmitters, and they in turn shape our reality. Early humans developed these neurotransmitters -- and resulting feelings -- as an inducement to seek out beneficial things (like food and sex) and avoid or attack harmful things (avoid tigers, attack neighbors trying to steal their land). A sense of sadness from loss spurred them to seek out others for commiseration and healing.

In mood disorders, these feelings come up without any trigger -- anger without a target, elation without a reason, sadness without actual loss. Anger leads to frustrating arguments and rants, elation leads to expansive affect (expression of mood) and a sense of being involved in bigger things, and deep, bottomless sadness leads to hopelessness.

The community can't understand the strength and depth of these feelings, so they shy away from the person with a mood disorder. We get the label "crazy" because these feelings, and the compulsive effort to try to express them to our and fix things, don't make sense to those around us.

So, I've been depressed, as I've mentioned before. Depression isn't a matter of "cheer up", "just get over it," or "why don't you volunteer?" When I'm depressed, my vision narrows to a pinprick where I'm alone in the room and will always be alone and I will die in that room. Yes, I know that sounds dramatic, but I'll write the more subtle poetic version someday.

My excellent pdoc (psychiatrist) put me on a drug called Latuda, which was working for a few days. But now I'm showing signs of lability of emotions -- which is a nice way of saying my emotions are all over the place. To understand this, imagine all your emotions and states of being -- fear, confusion, sadness, hopelessness, eudaimonia (grounded happiness) -- as channels on a television. Someone else has the remote and they hit the buttons randomly. I literally have gone from "I have nothing left in life" to "Hey, did you know dahlias are edible?" in a span of 4 minutes.

I've been having other symptoms -- and of course, the physical symptoms get more attention, because emotional symptoms are nebulous, not easily understood, and -- "just get over it".

It could be the Latuda or the high thyroid; we don't know yet. It could be something else -- but I doubt it's my heart despite wearing a Holter monitor overnight.

I hate being in this situation. I avoid people because I'm afraid they think I'm "crazy". I second-guess every interaction I have. I struggle between writing honestly and feeling like a circus sideshow.

I hope I'm not losing you over this, dear readers.