If you've been reading my blog lately, you know I've had a shitty couple of years. I'd entered a stage of my life I thought would be triumphant. I landed contracts with not one but two major publishers. I'd settled down with the love of my life. We'd climbed out of the hole the 2008 market crash had left us in. We'd even been able to buy a house. No McMansion, but it was our blue heaven. I had friends, family, success, and happiness. I had it all.
But as Fate is wont to do, as soon as one gets too comfortable, she jerked the fucking rug right out from under me. Bitch.
The downward spiral began with a hiccup (read: totally fucking devestating development) in my happily ever after. Let's just say neither MBH nor I had been on our best behavior and we made it through, but for me, it was the beginning of the end of my salad days.
The next setback came in a very lukewarm reception to a novel with a major publisher I had dreamed would be my breakout hit. A gal can dream can't she? This combined with ever smaller and less frequent royalty checks from the publisher that had been by bread and butter. There was only one way out: return to an evil day job. The move was supposed to be temporary and only part time.
From there, the hits just kept coming. Our blue heaven turned into a bit of money pit. The things we'd overlooked or thought we'd have time and money to repair all blew up at once leaving our savings sicklier than ever. So part time EDJ turned into full time leaving me with precious little time to ply my calling.
And then by bread and butter publisher folded taking all their author's unpaid royalties with them. I had neither the time nor the money to fight for what I was owed. Honestly, at that point I was done with being a writer anyway. That dreaming shit was for the birds. I was a real woman with a real family and a very real mortgage. Time to stop that Gen X slacker shit and grow the fuck up.
I'd accept my new role as "Adult" with a capital A. But all was not lost, I worked with an amazing group of people I respected and loved in a work family way. Things could be worse. And worse came in the form of a huge coorporation that gobbled up my cute little employer and similar employers in the area like a titan eating his own children. No more fun at work.
In retrospect, all those "problems" were small bumps in the road compared to what Fate had in store for me.
I've said it before and I will say it again. I am not one of those from my generation who blames their parents for screwing them up. I did that all on my own, thank you very much. My parents are smart, funny, capable, and kind (in their own way). I've always counted my mother as one of my best friends.
The trouble with Mom started in little ways. Forgotten details about some rambling tales I told her. That was normal with age, wasn't it? She wanted to sleep all the time. Again, she's no spring chicken and with her myriad health problems and the myriad drugs she was on to treat them, somnolence, even if it seemed a bit extreme wasn't all that hard to wave away.
Dad was the first to sound the alarm (Bravo, Dad!). He told me over and over something wasn't right. I'll admit, I was in a little denial. Plus, my parents and I don't live near each other so I wasn't there to see everything he saw. I mean the confounding emotional outbursts from from Mom were one of the things that Mom was known for. I never had one of those "let me coddle you through life and kiss your boo-boos" kind of mothers, but she made me tough and strong and outspoken so that was Mom being Mom, right?
A few months later the decline was marked. There was no more denial. There was no more explaining away this person who looked like Mom but that none of us recognized anymore. She slept all the time and when she wasn't asleep, she couldn't hold a normal conversation because she couldn't remember what had just been said. Not even when she was the one saying it.
The dementia grew worse and worse and I lost my mother and best friend in one fail swoop. Instead of looking forward to our talks two or three times a week, I dreaded having to call and visits to my parents were even worse. I was confronted with Stranger-Mom during every excruciating minute.
This, coupled with the very physical demands of my EDJ gave way to pain I'd never seen the likes of. Not just emotional, but physical. Very real physical pain. Limping down the stairs of townhouse kind of pain. Barely able to walk on my days off kind of pain. I'd taken this to mean middle age was catching up with all the injuries I'd sustained in my youth.
Desperate for relief, I consulted a pain specialist. We tried multiple therapies with limited success. About six months into our journey, my pain doc noted I was on more and more different types of meds. Well you prescribed them to me doc. What are you trying to say. He assured me it was only an observation, not a judgment. Was there something going on I hadn't told him? I broke down into tears in his office and spilled the whole story about my mom.
Ahh, the clouds parted for him. Not to worry. See emotional stress and depression can cause or exacerbate physical pain. But good news, there was a med that could treat certain types of physical pain and was also good for mild to moderate depression. Cymbalta. Skeptical, I took the RX and left.
The prescription sat on my nightstand for six weeks. I really didn't want to try it. Again, I'm not an anti-depressant snob. I just wasn't convinced that I was depressed.
And then my dad called. Mom had had some unusual symptoms for a woman her age. Her GYN investigated (Bravo, GYN!) and discovered my mother had uterine cancer. I could not process one more blow. Not one more. I put the Cymbalta RX and put it in my purse. I filled it the next day.
The first night I took it, I slept like a dream something that hadn't happened in a long time. Slowly, I started to feel better. Stronger than I had in ages. I was ready for the world again, and for that, I will always be grateful. Cymbalta seemed the savior I'd prayed for. I didn't cry all the time, I didn't lash out at loved ones when they didn't deserve it, I didn't want to scream at the blue sky above every moment of every day. It also calmed the storm of thoughts and misgivings and fear that raged in my mind.
Now, this storm was nothing new. My brain has always worked like an over-active Border Collie that, when left unchecked, would chew on my mental furniture. If I didn't get all those emotions and random bits of consciousness out in words, I would explode. It is why I write.
The change took place gradually. Cymbalta takes a good four to six weeks to reach therapeutic levels on one's bloodstream. I didn't notice anything was amiss and once I did, it took a little while to put two and two together. Honestly, had it not been for one particular side effect, I'm not sure I ever would have.
I spent a good nine months on Cymbalta. I was the rock everyone needed me to be. I was crushing my cancer support team role. I was a machine. I even handled my mother's double pulmonary embolism, an event for which I was the sole attendee, watching her gasping for air like a fish out of water and responding like a boss to get her to the hospital just in time, without shedding a tear. That should have been my first clue. But it wasn't. I was proud of how composed I'd been.
Even after the fact, I did not cry.
I'd decided I'd reached some level of maturity and acceptance where I could handle all this with the grace I'd always envied in others. Ha! My ass I had.
The first clue I wasn't myself came from MBH. It'd been a while since we'd been, ahem, intimate. Well, that couldn't be a surpise for him, could it? As much as I love rediscovering every inch of his delicious form every time we get down to it, ain't nobody had time for that shit lately.
But once he'd brought up the topic, I also noticed I hadn't taken care of such needs on my own in a long time either. Again, I rationalized that I just wasn't in the mood and with good reason. Plus, I wasn't thirty anymore. It all seemed very reasonable, but the seed of doubt had been planted.
I should be embarrassed to admit that it took a hit to my libido for me to question my newfound calm, but I'm not. I love my libido and so does MBH. It's part of who I am as is a way with words. But I'd found those had left me too.
On several occasions, I'd attempted to put fingers to keyboard resulting in disjointed, awkward, juvenile attempts at prose. This was alarming in its way. Was my mother's battle with death robbing me of everything? No, it turns out, it wasn't.
But what has changed. For the first time in almost a year, I pulled my head out of my ass and looked at what else was different. The only other thing that had changed was my pharmaceutical regimen. I remember looking at the bottle of capsules with suspicion. Could it be possible that I was not a superhero, but merely chemically enhanced (or damaged, depending on your point of view).
More as an experiment than an outright rejection of the therapy, I took a couple months to wean myself. A few weeks into the weaning, my answer became clear: I got choked up at a touching moment in a movie. Okay, okay, I bawled like a baby. Now, that's the Cindy we all know and love. I realized I hadn't done that in ages. Moreover, I hadn't felt ANYTHING in ages. And that simply, Cymbalta and I broke up for good.
Now I know this is a double-edged sword. Will I be able to accept life's punches to the gut like a Southern Belle demurely fanning herself? Nope. But I've never been much good at that shit anyway. I'll take my messy, dramatic, sobbing, wine and Ben and Jerry's stained hissy fits any day. Because it also means I feel everything else in a big way, too: joy, wonderment, silliness, arousal. Oh, yes, welcome back arousal. I missed you most of all.
I also got my words back. They spill forth faster than I can type them. The voices in my head are my friends and I wouldn't trade them for all the stoic grace in the world.
Cheers,
Cindy
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