I mean, people have posted a lot of bad reviews online. But I’m starting to wonder if it’s like anything else… 10x as many people will report a bad experience than will post a good experience… complainers are louder than happy people… and then we have that pesky one-size-never-fits-all that goes on with anti-depressants in general. ADs are such a flukey thing. The effects are so variable person-to-person. So I feel like I hit the jackpot, just for not wanting to off myself. :-P

The side-effects I reported the first week (the Day 4 post) have all but disappeared. All side-effects were gone within 2 weeks.

The longest, and most difficult for me, were the insomnia and restlessness… but they did both go away abruptly at about Day 10. The intestinal irregularities *ahem* have been highly annoying, but things are moving again without *ahem* pharmaceutical intervention. :) The only noticeable symptom that continues is sensitivity to pain, and that is slowly lessening with time. Key word being slowly. But even that is not near as bad as it was a week ago. A week ago, I wanted to cut off darn near every joint in my body…

The obvious effect, anti-depressant, is working just fine. I think that if I was in normal circumstances, I would feel great. Unfortunately I am surrounded by a very messy house (which aggravates and distracts the crap out of me, and about which I feel overwhelmed and incapable) and I am facing foreclosure on my business real estate. Intellectually I am glad to give the bank that worthless troublesome piece of sh*t, I am glad to have that ugly sore out of my life; but emotionally I carry a mountain of shame and embarrassment. I constantly wonder what people in town must think of me, how they look down on me. That I am a dismal and utter failure. And that, that’s a desperate, crushing weight to carry.

I keep reminding myself I did the best I could do at the time. I have gone back and picked apart my circumstances of the last 4 years, bit by bit, decision by decision, and I keep coming to the same conclusions I did then. I made the best choices with the circumstances I was given. I did the best I could do. If I had to do it all over again, I can’t find where I would make any changes. Changing the outcome now would have meant deeply hurting, and perhaps causing the death of, my own family.

There’s no way in hell a piece of frickin’ real estate is worth that. No way, ever. If people are going to be so insensitive (and shallow) to not understand that, they probably aren’t people I want in my life anyway. They probably aren’t going to enrich or participate in anything constructive, or helpful. So they can go squat on their opinion.

But you know, it’s hard to remember all that. It’s a lot easier to focus on the ignorant, inexperience-borne negative pre-judgments I’ve had about foreclosure and business failure for most of my young life. Doesn’t seem to matter they’re not valid… those thought patterns are believable because they are comfortable, like old jeans, I’ve worn ‘em a long time. Which is not a good reason to keep ‘em. It’s a constant, constant struggle.

If it weren’t for that colossal junk weighing me down — which I think anyone would agree, is pretty major-sized — I think I’d probably be in pretty fair shape on the current meds. I just don’t see how meds can erase circumstances. I really believe stress and depression are not unusual responses considering the circumstances. This isn’t little stuff.

It is unfortunate we were blanketed in 10 inches of snow yesterday, impeding access to the dumpster (let alone the car)… then again maybe I am just looking for excuses not to clean, eh? ;) It’s not as if there aren’t 50 million other things to clean/do… ##