Depression and Anti-Depressants Ch. 02

Being that I've been so used and abused by others who have tried to ruin my life, it's taken me decades to get some sort of happiness back in my life that I lost and should have had all along. Being that I endured and survived so much, other than a pill that I don't want and medication that I don't need and reject, there's nothing that anyone can do to me now. I've been through Hell and back. Now for some doctor to want to numb me with anti-depressant medication is something that I don't want and, always, I tell them no. I've numbed myself enough with alcohol when I was younger and want to be clearheaded now.

"No thank you." I tell them that I've already missed enough of my life for them to take any more of it away from me by giving me mind numbing and thought altering medication.

I'm not a doctor, a pharmacist, or even a chemist. I don't know enough about the human brain other than that I have one, I think. I don't know your personal psychological circumstances and why you were prescribed to take anti-depressants and I'm sure that your doctor is doing the right thing by you, but they are not for me. Having been down this road before with men using me as their sexual playthings, with too many doctors not knowing exactly what they're prescribing and how the side effects can personally affect me, I didn't want a doctor using me as his professional, medical, and human guinea pig. Some of these doctors are too free in prescribing pills, especially pain pills. Sorry. Presently, my only drug of choice is copious amounts of caffeine found in black, Starbucks' French roast coffee ground to a fine grind.

Maybe those who take these medications are or aren't much different than me. I don't know. Being that I'm not a trained professional but just a dizzy, ditzy, dumb, blonde writer, I have no idea and no way of knowing how these medications would help or hurt me. Sad that I had to endure all that I've endured to survive, yet, scratch the surface with me and I'm angry for all that happened to me. If I had to describe myself with two words, I'm sad and angry. Yet, if I could go back and change my life, I wouldn't change a thing. There's a reason why I went through what I went through, I just don't know what the reasons are and maybe I'll never know.

Yet that sadness and that anger are both all mine. I earned it and I own it and I don't want it removed with a pill that in twenty years researchers will say is inherently bad for you. They'll be lawyers advertising a class action lawsuit on TV called, Bad Drugs. After feeling and dealing with those emotions for so long, I don't want some happy pill taking my thoughts and my real emotions away from me. Rather than being someone else, some eternally happy person, some artificial product of a drug, I like being me. Besides, I need that sadness and that anger to remember all that was done to me for sex. I need my depression to write.

For sex, I was beaten. For sex, I was tortured. For sex, I was raped. For sex, I was used, abused, and nearly murdered. Yet, sex had nothing to do with what happened to me. Lucky to be alive, I'm a survivor of violence and I don't ever want to forget what happened to me by taking one of these happy pills.

* * * * *

In the way that McMurphy had a lobotomy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, I wonder if anti-depressant medications are nothing more than modern day mini lobotomies. I'm not a doctor, a scientist, or even a pharmacist but I know what I know. Rather than doing it the hard way with psychological therapy, anti-depressant medication is a quick and easy fix in the way of a Fen Phen diet pill. In the way that a drunk doesn't realized that he's too drunk to drive, those who need the medication and who are on the medication may not even know how psychological sick and emotionally damaged they are. Those who are on the medication obviously have a different viewpoint than I do for them to take what I won't take.

If not in jail, many of those who have had a similar background as I have had have turned to alcohol, drugs, suicide, and/or become abusers themselves. Instead, by the way of my writing my erotic stories, through writing my fiction and wearing it as my badge of honor, I've taken my pain as my personal mission to improve the quality of my life. Always willing to work and a hard worker when I was employed, yet unable to break the cycle that I wear as a yoke around my neck, unemployment and poverty is not my fault. Inherent in my poverty, being that my Mom was poor and uneducated, I'm poor and not as educated as I could have been if my family had money and if I had the opportunity to go to graduate school.

Now no longer looking for a good paying, full-time job with benefits that isn't there, instead of wasting my time and energy looking for a low paying, part-time job that has no benefits and no job satisfaction, I write my stories. I'm happiest while creating, developing, writing, and editing my stories. I've finally found my passion, even if it is writing erotica on a porn board. So what? I could be doing worse things with my time.

Definitely, there are worse things that I could do with my time. I could have followed my mother and become a model, turned stripper, and turned prostitute, but I didn't. I could have fucked and sucked every man I knew for money. Being that she had children to support, giving her some modicum of credit, perhaps had I been a single mother, I would have done what she did.

Yet, glad that I didn't follow in her footsteps, I wear that as another badge of honor that I didn't exchange sex for money, even when I needed money the most to buy food and pay for rent. I could have stayed married to my ex, had children, and watched him sexually, emotionally, and physically abused my children in the way that he sexually, emotionally, and physically abused me but I didn't. Done with that kind of violent life, running away from Massachusetts to live in Pennsylvania with my mother, before the flood, was the only thing I could do to save myself.

* * * * *

When writing, I'm never depressed. Instead, I'm happy. I'm happiest when creating storylines. I'm happiest when developing characters. I'm happiest when my characters are whispering in my ear what next to write. I'm happiest when reading all that I wrote while my cast of characters are surrounding me and are listening to me tell them their story. I don't want to lose that happiness by taking a pill that's going to alter my mind, change my mood, and prevent me from writing my stories. I'd rather be sad, I'd rather be angry, and I'd rather be angry if that's the only way for me to continue to write fiction and erotica.

Now that I've found my passion for writing, am I going to give all of that up for some happy pill to make me calm and happy instead of making me feel my real emotions of being sad and angry? I need that sadness to write. I need that anger to craft my stories and breathe life into my characters. Sadness and anger are all that I have left after having a shit of a mother, perverts for brothers, and a losing crapshoot of a life. After all that others have put me through, I can forgive those who so hurt me but I'll never forget what they've done to me. Continuing to count on that pain and suffering sorrow, I need that internal and ceaseless sadness to write.

If I take a pill, maybe I'll forget what it is that I need to remember to write. Always there, my misery and suffering sorrow never ends. Just as my misery and suffering sorrow is important to me, my sadness, my anger, my depression is me. My misery is who I am.

Yet, it is my misery and not some doctor's misery for him to think that he can take it away from me and cure all my angst and anxiety with a magic pill. How dare they do that to people without telling them the ramifications and the side effects of these very dangerous anti-depressant medications? These doctors simply don't know what these medications can do and do to the mind of those taking them that is, until someone goes off, walks into their workplace with a gun, and starts shooting people.

For those of you who take anti-depressant medication, have had some success with taking them, and have found some level of peace and wellbeing, I applaud you. I'm so very sorry for your personal, mental affliction and am glad that you've found some solace by taking a pill. I wish there was something that I can do to help you understand that one magic pill that may work for one person may not work for someone else and vice versa. In the way that your magic pill works for you, it may not work for me.

Yet, I wonder, if you're such a great person now that you're on anti-depressant drugs, I can't imagine the person you may have been had all that caused your depression not happened to you. I know if all that happened to me never did, I would have been a much different person and a much better person, I suspect. I wouldn't be sitting here now in Hannah's guest bedroom while writing this review and essay. Yet, a reason for everything, maybe this is my reason for writing this. I hope readers will get as much out of reading this as I have in writing it.

THE END