Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
So there I was, a Sunday in the middle of June, home alone, reading Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt, having a completely fine time. I take a break to scroll through Twitter and come across a scary thread about COVID.
Now, normally, no big deal. COVID has been scary this entire time. There isn’t anything new being said here. But for whatever reason, this thread slips through the cracks and buries itself in my brain. I start pacing around my empty apartment, hyper-ventilating and breaking out into this half-sobbing facial contortions that would probably be extremely embarrassing if anyone else were to see them.
Because I’m not thinking about COVID being scary in the abstract way it always has been. I’m thinking of the very real possibility of myself and my loved ones getting very sick. Except instead of the usual “Well that is a scary thought, time to move on” reaction that I try to cultivate, it becomes intrusive. I start thinking about myself and every single one of my loved ones dying slowly and miserably. Not just from this illness, from anything.
And then I start thinking about death.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that for the last month and a half, thinking about death has felt like it’s ruined my life. It took over my thoughts. It took over my conversations. It robbed me of my sense of self.
…
I began to feel like I myself wasn’t real.
…
I went to see my GP for a regular check up and discovered that, broadly speaking, I was about as fit as a diabetic fiddle can be— in fact, right about to turn the corner into becoming a potentially recovered diabetic. I spoke to my doctor about my anxiety, and he prescribed me Lexapro.
I had already been taking some of Deanna’s buspirone as a sort of self-medication for anxiety, and though it helped me get over a heart-palpitation-every-few-minutes trough of panic, it wasn’t making my intrusive, constant thoughts go away. I told my doctor about the buspirone and he said I could take it with the Lexapro and slowly taper it off.
My first night taking the Lexapro ranks among the worst nights of my entire life. I genuinely thought I had somehow given myself serotonin syndrome. I slept not one fucking wink. I got up to shit my life away no less than six times, and twice I puked so hard I saw some blood in my pathetic post-vomit spit. I got a terrifying feeling all over my body, as though I was burning hot and freezing cold all at once. My heart was out of control.
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-xoxo, Ellie