I [...]]]> It was when I was thrift store shopping that I remembered that one of the things I want to do when I get a wheelbarrow full of money, besides purchase a nuclear-powered stove and get my name etched on the surface of the moon, was get a tummy tuck. Flat-out, straight-up plastic surgery.

I knew I’d want one even before I got weight loss surgery. My stomach has always made me uncomfortable—I remember thinking as a teenager, when a friend confessed that she had let the boy she was making out with put his hand down her pants, that I could NEVER, EVER do that. He would TOUCH my STOMACH. The idea filled me with revulsion.

My own body, filling me with revulsion.

There’s so much wrong with that. There’s everything wrong with that. I don’t know how to explain how much there is that’s wrong with it. I don’t know how to fix it, either, except to do the same thing I did. I went and got weight loss surgery, because I thought my size and my shape and my fat were repulsive.

And I thought I had come to terms with that. That whatever problems I have, they were not the sole consequence of being fat, and that being fat was not an ugly thing or bad thing, that being fat was having a particular physical description, not a moral failing.

So see, weight loss surgery did make me a better person after all! We are all beautiful unique flowers with beautiful bodies and precious souls.

Except that I want to go get a tummy tuck because I think the stomach I have left over, from having been twice as wide as I am now, is ugly, unappealing, will actually physically repel anyone who glimpses it.

The idea of anyone looking at my stomach makes me so uncomfortable I can hardly sit still. It is difficult to continue to type this, to continue to talk about this idea. To confront the fact that the way we deal with the things we dislike about our bodies is so often to find a way to fix it.

I want to be fixed. There it is. Weight loss surgery was a way to fix my body, tattoos are a way to fix my body, saving up six thousand dollars and letting a doctor whack off the skin he calls “excess” and hauling it all up like he was pulling up a pair of panties for me—that will fix my body. Until I figure out what else needs fixing, and how much it’s going to cost to fix it.

Sometimes I feel like despite of All The Adversity, I still manage to comport myself as a fairly adult member of society. I’m generally responsible and reasonably with-it. I pay my bills, I floss, I change the sheets weekly, I keep up with the laundry and the dishes. My deadlines are all met [...]]]>

Sometimes I feel like despite of All The Adversity, I still manage to comport myself as a fairly adult member of society. I’m generally responsible and reasonably with-it. I pay my bills, I floss, I change the sheets weekly, I keep up with the laundry and the dishes. My deadlines are all met and my to-do lists, for the most part, have neat, straight strike-outs marching down the page.

That’s pretty damn good, I think. But then you meet my dog, and you think huh. That is a dog who thinks he is a little person, and can get on the couch with the rest of the people. That is a dog who does what he likes. That is a spoiled rotten little dog. Luckily he is the cutest dog the world has ever seen, or boy oh boy he’d be in trouble.

Those are all true things. He sits, he shakes, he lies down, he will not go through the front door until we say Okay, he stops at every corner until we give him the go ahead, he knows fetch, and give, and drop it, and down and uh-uh, kisses!, get him!, and no. He’s working on roll over.

But Crommy is also allowed on the couch and in the bed. Crommy gives kisses like he’s trying to take your face off. Crommy jumps up. Crommy barks when he is worried. Crommy thinks you should cook him a hamburger. Crommy sounds like a badly oiled door when he does not get his way—he creaks and cries and he suffers. Oh, how he suffers. Oh, how we don’t understand the pain he is enduring, when he does not get what he wants when he wants it, and oh how badly he wants it—we’ll never truly understand. Luckily what he usually wants is love. He wants to be next to me, on me, in my arms, looking into my eyes and expressing all the adoration he has in his heart for me, and for hamburger. For such a small dog, he can carry around a lot of love.

Part of this is my fault—I’ve never owned a dog, until my little bug. It never occurred to me that dogs shouldn’t get certain privileges. It did not even cross my mind that I shouldn’t snuggle him every time he wanted snuggling because I would be engendering in him a feeling that he has rights and by god I am taking those rights away when I do not drop everything to give him what he needs, without which he shall die.

Part of this is not my fault—no, seriously. He never begged—until he spent extended time at grandma and grandpa’s house, the magical land where treats rain from the sky and a sausage is cooked special for the dogs every morning and dogs can jump up and never have to sit before they get a treat or their dinner. He didn’t beg until Eben started working at home and sharing his chicken nuggets, I promise you that.

And I’ve tried very hard to teach him manners, but he is half Boston Terrier, and those suckers are excitable. Seriously. They are all like this, all the Boston Terriers in the world. They jump and run and they creak and whine and are tragically neurotic and there is very little to combat that particular personality trait. Or at least very little I’m willing to do, because yes. He’s not crate trained because the noises of tragedy broke my heart and yes, he sleeps between E and I every night, and also he steals the covers.

And when I meet people with perfectly behaved dogs, or when Crom jumps up or he gets anxious when a stranger comes in and won’t stop barking or he won’t quit mooning around the house like we’ve grounded him or he won’t just settle down, I feel like I’m a bad person who broke her dog.

But he’s also one of the best things that has ever happened to me. There is very little in the world that is like the unconditional love that a dog is willing to provide you. He is so smart, and so loving. He is playful, and silly, and when he bursts across the field in flat-out pursuit of the ball you just threw for him, the joy in every line of his body fills me with that very same happiness. When he is only content when he’s finally curled up against my hip with his chin on my leg, I am content too. He is ridiculous and he makes me laugh every day and I love that little dog more than I love most things. I think I’m probably coming to a place where I am okay with what that says tabout me as a person.

A friend texted, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what that’s like, but I’m sorry,” and it took me a minute to figure out a way to explain it. I finally texted back, “It’s like you’re going crazy, and you can’t do anything about it.” And that is the best way I have [...]]]>

A friend texted, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what that’s like, but I’m sorry,” and it took me a minute to figure out a way to explain it. I finally texted back, “It’s like you’re going crazy, and you can’t do anything about it.” And that is the best way I have found yet to describe the sensation of going off Effexor.

I thought I’d write a blog entry and then I’d be sad for awhile and then I’d move on to greener fields and less crazy pastures, because that is how things usually go, right? You deal with them and you move on. But it turns out that this shit just keeps happening, and it gets worse the lower the dose and I am getting pretty tired of spending so much time feeling sorry for myself.

It’s gotten to the point where I stop, before I post on Twitter or on Facebook, and I think to myself, “Is this a cry for help?” By which I mean, am I whining again? Usually yes. Sometimes I post anyway! Because undeniably, it is nice to be told that people love you, that people are thinking about you, that people know you will be okay and they are rooting for you, and here is a wonderful puppy to enjoy in the meantime.

It’s especially nice when you’ve locked yourself away like you are Mr. Rochester and also, at the same time! Mr. Rochester’s crazy wife in the attic. I cannot be seen! I am an abomination! I must not be spoken to! I must not be spoken of! I am so lonely and crazy, I am going to set the house on fire! And then I’m going to sit on the couch while it burns because making my way to the roof is much too difficult.

That is an extended literary analogy for my state of mind at this current moment. So you see how it is. With the craziness and everything.

E has been a saint, and patient with the flailing and accepting the endless apologies for the endless cycles of sadness and anger and sadness and anger. He tells me it’s not going to be much longer, and that he can tell that I am more like myself than I have been in a long time, and I cling to that. I am becoming more like myself. Hopefully with the excess crazy trimmed away.

Physically it has been odd; the brain flashes have minimized, but I have headaches and I am sleeping like the dead every night for twelve hours. It’s hard to wake up, and then I take a nap. I keep forgetting things. I have placed more non-food items in the fridge these past few weeks than I have in my entire life up until this point, and I have always been the kind of person to absent-mindedly leave my phone in the oven and pour boiling water into the sugar jar instead of over the tea bag in my cup. Both of which are things I have also managed to do in the past two weeks.

I’ve been trying to do whatever it is I feel like I need to do to take care of myself, without feeling guilty. I write, and I stay inside and I say no when I have to, and I keep a to-do list and carefully check off items on the to-do list, which makes me feel steady and like I’m staying on course and not falling behind. The dogs keep me sane and the writing, every day, keeps me feeling worthwhile and I am getting through this. Not as quickly as I would have liked, but steady going, straight ahead.

We talk a lot about how much we hate our stove. “I hate this stove,” I say. “This stove is awful,” E says. This stove is a relic, this stove is a piece of crap, this stove is one thousand years old and why, god, why have you cursed us with a stove [...]]]>

We talk a lot about how much we hate our stove. “I hate this stove,” I say. “This stove is awful,” E says. This stove is a relic, this stove is a piece of crap, this stove is one thousand years old and why, god, why have you cursed us with a stove that makes us drop to our knees, every single day, and weep olive oil tears while we beat at our chicken breasts and wail at the uncaring heavens?

It came with the house, I feel like I should tell you. And the first time I saw it, I thought it was adorable, I should confess. It is so old timey! Look at the adorable uh, knobs! And things! Isn’t it cute the way it uses electricity? Maybe it made me feel like I was back in my childhood, where every single thing in the house was electric, including our baseboard heaters and our boogie woogie woogie.

It may be a beautiful old piece of history (ha ha ha ha ha!) but it is also the worst kitchen stove in the world. Ever. In the history of the stoves and kitchens. The burners are all crooked and heat unevenly, and the oven hasn’t decided yet what temperature 350 degrees is, and it’s small and stupid and we hates it, we do.

We have a home warranty, and we managed to successfully obtain a new dishwasher to replace our antique dishwasher inside of which was an actual, ineffective little dinosaur with a little scrub brush. We thought, let’s get a new stove! A man who was one thousand and four years old came out and looked at it while I hovered over him, desperately trying to convince him that it was broken forever and ever. “It doesn’t heat up! It heats up too much! Sometimes, um, it catches on fire! But sometimes it won’t even start! WE HEARD VOICES COME FROM DEEP WITHIN AND THEN IT FOUNTAINED BLOOD!”

He said, “mm hmm,” and charged us thirty dollars and went away, and we still have the same stove that we have always had, which we are pretty convinced is going to be buried with us and probably also get the best epitaph, too.

This is sad because we want to cook. We want to cook every! We want to cook all. Because—well, have you ever met someone who has eaten fast food for every single meal for weeks on end? Yes, that’s us. Yes, we’ve seen Super-Size Me. Yes, we’re ashamed and our hearts are as fatty and enlarged as our butts.

But the thing is that we cook for a week and then we can’t stand the crooked burners and the weird uneven heat and the teeny little stove and the dark little kitchen and suddenly we’re on the road again, arguing over whether it has been long enough since we’ve eaten Taco Bell that our intestinal microbes have forgiven and forgotten.

We need a stove. I used to think that if I got a windfall of money first I’d pay to have my name lasered into the moon, and then I’d pay off my credit card debt and student loan, and then I’d get a full-body tuck, where all the parts of me that stick out are tucked in. But now I’m thinking a windfall of money is first, going straight up my nose and secondly, going right into a fancy nuclear-powered stove and thirdly, I am getting my name laser-carved into the moon.

I surprised myself yesterday when I realized I’ve written two books. That’s not, like, a lot of books. It’s a very small number of books, in fact. It is more than one, which is its distinguishing characteristic, but it’s a lot less than, say, fifteen.

But two books feels like a [...]]]>

I surprised myself yesterday when I realized I’ve written two books. That’s not, like, a lot of books. It’s a very small number of books, in fact. It is more than one, which is its distinguishing characteristic, but it’s a lot less than, say, fifteen.

But two books feels like a respectable number of books to have written. Manuscripts to have finished. I sat down, and on two separate occasions, plus a lot of bonus occasions for editing, I sweated through several hundred thousand words. Sometimes I wonder why my hands ache and my forearms are tight and I get this pain in my wrist, but that’s only because I am very forgetful and even not so bright, sometimes.

Two books is huge, though, considering the fact that even though I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid (I have this whole story about discovering that books were written by regular people and that I, too, could be one of those regular people and how it was a magical discovery that changed my whole life, blah blah blah) but I never wrote a word when I was a kid. Maybe a couple of words. Maybe a page or two. I was not one of those kids who was always scribbling, who wrote forty-three books in crayon and stapled them together and kept them in a trunk.

I wrote a soap opera for some friends when I was in high school. I think about two pages of a story to impress a boy at some point. In college, I wrote creative essays and some poems. After college, I wrote about a chapter of something I was calling a novel except it was really a lie because all I ever wrote was that chapter but I kept revising it and making people read it. I started to do a thing called Online Journaling that everyone calls blogging now, and that was my major creative outlet. Wait, creative should be in quotes. “Creative” outlet. There we go.

For whatever reason, I had this conviction that I was a writer and that I wanted to write when I grew up and that I was really totally great at writing, but somehow I never managed to write a single goddamn thing. And yet I applied to graduate school to get an MFA in creative writing and they let me in—on the basis, if I recall, of that single awful chapter of that pretend novel I was pretending I was writing.

In school, in my very first graduate course, I wrote a truly terrible not-memoir, which was basically me rehashing all the online journal posts—blog posts—I had been writing about moving to San Francisco to go to grad school. It did not have a beginning or an ending but I decided to call the first page the beginning and the last page the ending and hope no one noticed. It was called “tectonic” because that was a pun. Then I wrote a short story and it was a miracle! Because I started something and finished it and it was—bad. It was pretty bad. (Every once in awhile I pull it up to try to revise it and then I laugh a lot and put it away again.)

Then more stories. And I finished them! And I got one published! And I cried! And I thought, holy wow, maybe I am a writer! Check this shit out, yo! However: I didn’t write unless I had an assignment. And having to write a thesis-slash-novel almost killed me. I wrote the same chapter over and over and my long-fiction workshop professor kind of hated me and then hated me more while he summer-advised me during which I gave him the same chapters over and over again and then I threw my hands in the air and ran away crying and dropped out of school. But I came back. And I took another long-fiction workshop and then another and somehow, I wrote that thesis, and when I sat back and looked at it, I realized I had written a book. A book!

It wasn’t (still isn’t) a good book. But I wrote it. And then I didn’t write anything again for about four years, I think, except an occasional online journal entry (blog), and then a blog about weight loss surgery.

Then, I wrote a book about weight loss surgery. It took three years to write that fucking thing and I cried a lot during it because it is hard to be honest about how awful you can be and the horrible mistakes you’ve made. And in the end, I wrote a good book. I know it’s good. It’s honest and it’s the best I could do to say important things about body image and weight and the psychology of fat. I am proud of that book.

And maybe that’s what broke me. Because I’m writing again. That eleven thousand words is now about 16,000 more words on the young adult novel I’ve been writing and it’s almost finished, I think, close to it anyway, and I’ve written four more short-short stories and there is a feeling inside me that is very akin to happiness and satisfaction or maybe even joy. I can call it joy, I think. I’m going to go ahead and do that.

Two books, a lot of little stories. I haven’t written much for how old I am and how long I’ve thought about writing, but feel like maybe I really am one of those regular people, the kind who make books.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten weight loss surgery—five years, I want to say. Maybe six? Maybe less than that. Maybe somewhere in between that. I could get up and find the stack of paper I have, a whole folder’s worth,about as thick as ream of printer paper, of documentation and [...]]]>

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten weight loss surgery—five years, I want to say. Maybe six? Maybe less than that. Maybe somewhere in between that. I could get up and find the stack of paper I have, a whole folder’s worth,about as thick as ream of printer paper, of documentation and medical records and instructions and manuals and permission slips and checklists and diagrams and insurance bills and medical bills and leaflets and pamphlets. Weight loss surgery involves a lot of paperwork, and I’ve saved all of it like I’m afraid there’s going to be an open-book test and I’m going to really regret spending an hour shredding everything.

If there were any kind of test about weight loss surgery, though, I’d fail it. I could never really, and I still can’t, describe exactly what they were going to do up inside me, what with the intestines and the re-routing and the cutting out. I know you’re supposed to eat primarily protein, but I don’t remember amounts and grams, and the final word on fat, I don’t think I ever really waited around to hear it. I also still have no idea how to pronounce duodenal. Doo-odd-en-all? Duo-dennal? Something like that. I had it switched. Whatever the fuck that means.

What it boils down to: an uncertain number of years ago an unclear procedure was performed on unconfirmed areas of my digestive system, and subsequently, though I was unsure about and unprepared for what I was supposed to eat and when and where and how and to what extent, I lost a lot of weight. I lost all of the weight. I lost so much weight that people were starting to say Jen, where did your weight go? Do you need us to help you find it? Here is a sandwich. He is very helpful at looking.

Weight loss surgery was a fucking miracle. I lost a lot of weight, no matter what I did. I was free! I was clear! The world was a beautiful place because I was cured! I had no tits, but I was cured!

I wasn’t cured. That’s the secret surprise ending. I still have this candy issue. And I don’t like to exercise. And I’ve gained weight back. Not to the point where I’m fat-by-society’s-bullshit-standards, I think—but the bullshit part is that I feel fat. I am the size I dreamed about being my entire life—this is one hundred percent a true fact. I used to daydream about being a size 12. I thought 12 was such a good number. I have my boobs back; my butt’s always been there. I have curves, I can shop off the rack in most straight-size stores and can still go thrift store shopping and you can’t see my ribs and that’s a good thing.

And holy crap, I hate it. Holy crap, what is wrong with me? I have no idea! I still have no idea how this whole weight loss surgery thing works! I want to go back to the part where I was just happy to have lost all the weight and didn’t have to think about food or dieting or exercise ever again. I want to be peacefully stupid. I want to be happily ignorant. I want to be a size six again, and I want to punch myself in the face for saying that, and then keep punching myself in the face.

I did learn one thing, during this whole weight loss surgery-type journey I’ve been on: if you are not happy with your body and in your skin, it doesn’t matter what size you are and what other people think you look like. There is no objectivity when it comes to being comfortable with your body. There is only you and all your subjectivity and it doesn’t matter if someone tells you that you’re crazy and gorgeous—if you are unhappy with your weight or your size or your muscle tone, you need to do something about it. Diet, exercise, self-actualization and peaceful letting go—whatever works. It’s all good, if it’s healthy.

And yet I still want to punch myself in the face for being unhappy and ungrateful with the body I’ve got. I feel like I’ve been rescued from being 300 pounds—and I’m being churlish and ungracious about it.

I’ll do something about it. I’ll probably start walking the dogs, instead of just standing there and chucking the ball for them. I’ll probably try to eat just a little less of the candy that makes me sick (candy makes me sick? I say wonderingly, every single time I’m sick after eating candy). I’ll probably try to self-actualize. I’ll find a smarter way to spend the next five to six years. Maybe figure out how to pronounce duodenal.

One of those days where every single thing in the whole wide world is stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. You are stupid and you, and you and you and especially you and I hate you all, but that’s okay, because I hate myself even more, okay? Okay then!

I laid in bed for [...]]]>

One of those days where every single thing in the whole wide world is stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. You are stupid and you, and you and you and especially you and I hate you all, but that’s okay, because I hate myself even more, okay? Okay then!

I laid in bed for an hour after the alarm went off and the dogs were supposed to stay with me and snore and make me feel better—that is their job. But they went off to pad around the house and wrestle and growl and Ogre was probably peeing all over everything and the room was too bright to go back to sleep and I hate everything especially sunshine and dogs and these pillows and life.

E came in and threw my pants at my head. “Come on,” he said.

“No,” I said, and rolled over and put my face in one of the stupid pillows.

“Get up,” he said, and pulled the comforter off of me. The dogs jumped up on the bed and started wrestling on my head.

“I hate you!” I said. I was filled with a great sense of injustice and rage.

“I don’t care,” he said. “Get up. Get dressed.”

“No!” I said, and then “Okay, okay!” when he reached for my feet because he is cruel and doesn’t understand that tickling is not a proportionate response.

I got dressed sullenly and stomped down the stairs. Ogre was wearing his winter coat with the fur hood and bouncing around. Crom was staring patiently, fixedly at the door. E handed me the keys. The dogs quivered at the front door when we opened it, and then exploded off the stoop like we had shot them from a t-shirt cannon when we said “Okay.”

We drove to the park. We threw the ball for Crom across the field of snow, and he took off in a gallop, his feet not touching the ground at all. Ogre leapt across the drifts like a fat gazelle and rubbed his face in the snow and spun in circles and looked delighted to be alive. Crom shot back and forth across the field in single-minded pursuit, his heart full of the joy of the fetch and return. Everything was bright and clear and the mountain was close enough to put in your pocket and E turned to me and I was going to punch him if he said, “I told you so,” because I could feel myself grinning when Crom leapt high and neatly plucked the ball from the air.

But he said, “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” and I said, “Me too.”

Eleven days into 2012 and I’ve already written a little over eleven thousand words on the manuscript I’m trying to finish, plus a handful of thousand words on little short-shorts that aren’t very good but are satisfying to write. In these past eleven days I have written more than I did in the [...]]]>

Eleven days into 2012 and I’ve already written a little over eleven thousand words on the manuscript I’m trying to finish, plus a handful of thousand words on little short-shorts that aren’t very good but are satisfying to write. In these past eleven days I have written more than I did in the past eleven weeks prior, and suddenly I feel like a useful member of society.

Not that anything I’m writing is useful or will benefit society in any appreciable way, unless you would like to argue that the making of things, the exercise of the almost certainly unique human ability to create things that are purely aesthetic in nature, adds a little bit of spark to the world and helps to rev up the spiritual engine of life that keeps us all moving forward in this crazy world of ours. Or not.

But despite going crazy, despite feeling like every day’s a struggle right now (and it won’t be forever, but when you’re struggling right this second—that is really remarkably difficult to remember), I have this to point to and say oh, hey, look. Look at that. That is pretty fucking cool. The fact that I am writing every day is pretty impressive to me, anyway. It’s something I’d like to keep doing all the way through the year, an unbroken string of days.

Ideally, on December 31, 2012 I’d like to sit back and say, “Despite all the hardships that befell not only me but the earth, like when gas got really expensive and I lost both my thumbs and the zombies rose up and fully half the ocean was drained away into space by a giant striped bendy straw, the origin of which we are still struggling to understand, I still wrote every single day, a minimum of five hundred words but more usually about a thousand words, with the occasional three to ten thousand word marathon days that are such a luxury and a pleasure, and for which I would have gladly given even more thumbs, if I had had them to give.”

That is my dream. It’s a simple dream, but I am nothing if not kind of simple.

I’ve been on Effexor for over ten years. It’s an SNRI used to treat depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Luckily I am both depressed and generally anxious, so I’m not just taking these meds recreationally.

When I went to the doctor, it was because I was unable to eat [...]]]>

I’ve been on Effexor for over ten years. It’s an SNRI used to treat depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Luckily I am both depressed and generally anxious, so I’m not just taking these meds recreationally.

When I went to the doctor, it was because I was unable to eat because I was generally crazy, and though it really was a secret, incredibly guilty pleasure to have lost fifty pounds in a month or so because the only calories I was taking in were caramel macchiatos, I was tired of being scared all the time for no reason, and nauseated, and kind of crazy.

The doctor said, “Try this!” and I said “Sure!” and he put me on my first dose of Effexor—fairly low, but wildly helpful. I was still crazy. There is no pill in the world that will ever make me less crazy. But I wasn’t sick and terrified and sad all the time, and it felt like a miracle to me.

It never occurred to me to stop taking it, once I felt better—I didn’t ever want to stop feeling better, and I was afraid to ever feel like that again. But I became depressed (more depressed, I suppose) and the doctor suggested upping my dose, and I shrugged and agreed. More of a good thing, right? All of the good thing!

And this is the pattern I followed for about six years—I am sad! I need fixing! Effexor smash! I think I was afraid to take anything else because Effexor had always seemed to work. Effexor always seemed easy to take, because all you had to do was just add another pill or take a slightly larger one. And going off Effexor is a nightmare from hell.

When I missed a dose—and I have missed plenty of doses—you get lightheaded. You feel sick, and like you’ve been crying for hours. Your heart beats fast and your brain starts to twitch. It is an actual, physical sensation inside your skull, a snap, a shiver, an instant of disorientation. It is as unpleasant to experience as it is to try and describe. It starts to happen as soon as you get an hour or so past the time you usually take your crazy pill.

Somehow, though, it never occurred to me that maybe taking a brain pill that makes your brain twitch like an addict in withdrawal was a bad idea. I just kept taking my pills. Even when I went to freelancing full time and lost my insurance and my prescription was over three hundred dollars a month, I kept paying for it.

Then we went to Chicago for a long weekend. I dug through my bag that first night and I said “huh. I know I packed my pills.” I never forgot to pack them. The nex tmorning, I emptied out all my bags. I emptied out E.’s bags. I crawled around the hotel room, digging under the bed and the desk and through the doors and the garbage bins. I didn’t have my pills. Somehow I made it through the day. I made it through the beautiful wedding we were there for. That night I screamed, “I know I brought them! Where the fuck are my pills?” I fell asleep crying.

Instead of going out in our favorite city I spent the rest of the weekend googling how to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. The internet is full of miserable people trying to get off Effexor. I didn’t want to be on Effexor any more. Ten years of this drug soaked up into the tissue of my brain, bloated with whatever chemicals I’ve been feeding myself, spending thousands of dollars.

Right now, I’m trying to withdraw the sane way—where you step down your dose slowly, carefully. Take a little less every week. With, of course, the advice of my doctor. So far it’s going great! I spend forty minutes of every hour trying to talk myself out of crying, and the other twenty minutes I spend crying in the bathroom with the water turned up loud. I can feel my head ballooning with rage; it is light and hot and it’s going to pop and fountain hate all over every one I love, and I know that’s going to go really well too.

This sucks; there is no finer way to put it. This sucks, and I am tired of feeling like I am on the verge of a breakdown. But I’ll get through it, because that is the option that I have, just the one. And then I’ll find a nice, affordable way to keep myself from being crazy on a day-to-day basis, and not have to worry about this for another ten years.