Day six of antidepressants

This is an update from my last post about starting antidepressants.Today is day six of Lexapro 5mg. I should up my dose to 10mg on Thursday, but I am going to wait until Saturday in an effort to manage the side effects at home. It has been a weird roller coaster of feelings, folks. The only way that I know how to describe the feeling is comparing it to taking a hallucinogenic drug at a party and finding out that you forgot you have to work and nobody can cover so you are tripping where you should not be tripping. The bonus, I guess, is that this feeling is not the constant state. Instead, it just pops up randomly like when you first wake up in the morning, or when you are in a meeting and it is your turn to make a point.I found the weekend was much better. That makes sense, though, because I wasn’t at work where my baseline mood is unhappy and anxious. Throw in some new meds that make my synapses fire all wonky, and you got a super cool mix of FreAKinG OuT.I feel like I have come a long ass way since Friday morning. On day two, I woke up shaking and crying so hard that I did not think I was going to make it to work. My brain was telling me to document what was happening so I underlined the symptoms on a list from a website and attempted to take a selfie. I was shaking so hard that I had to use two hands. I drove to work like that. And then something happened. A close friend texted me that her daughter had just committed suicide. I was at a red light, saw the text, and it was like a switch went off inside of my soul. I immediately stopped shaking and crying. It was like an old black and white movie when someone is having a meltdown and someone else slaps them across the face. I pulled over and called her. This world is so incredibly hard. Being a good human is proving to be more and more difficult. We can tell our kids to be nice and kind, to care about everyone the same, and to respect each other, but we cannot protect them from everything. We can’t protect them from the hurt, frustration, and sadness that will eventually affect them because this world is so difficult. I think about my parents and how they did everything that they could to ensure that I was a strong, good person, but even my mother was suffering from undiagnosed depression. I can see her mood swings and sadness so clearly now. And I can feel it, in my bones. Today is day six. And I am doing what my doctor told me, as best that I can.