PLAN FOR A CRISIS
This plan may take years to achieve. You may relapse several times before you actually get there. First you need an accurate diagnosis. Then you need to start experimenting with drugs that may or may not work. So there may be an extended period of frustration. But you do not mind being a guinea pig. Anything is better than this. In fact, even though you may never have felt comfortable with weird groups that called themselves “Girl Scouts” – since you were always more comfortable being a loner – you now feel like you deserve their highest medal for being med compliant. So you may keep trying drug after drug in hopes that you will magically discover the right combination that works for you, despite several repeated failures and frustrations. You discover early on that no two drugs work alike for no two people. It’s a semi-educated guess for a relatively crude understanding of the brain, and no respectable scientist will deny this.
You may spend years and years on the merry-go-round, wishing for it to stop.
Meanwhile you cannot function or be productive. This accelerates the sense of grief and failure that you feel. You know, somewhere deep inside, lies the treasure which we may customarily refer to as the soul. But you just can’t get there, so you run around in the same circles, whether with pen and paper or couch paralysis.
You’re highly vulnerable and prone to attracting predators. And you see that there is no difference between you and someone in a wheel chair – well, almost no difference, since you look normal. This will invariably confuse others. Some may be empathetic. And others will spontaneously desert you. In a flash. The sensation is palpable. And you might say to yourself: Another one bites the dust. Eh, fuck them. Not worth your time.
So the journey of frustration continues. You don’t – but you might – necessarily feel unworthy or guilty. If only you could just find the key…
Day after day the same numb sensation inhibits all sense of pleasure, motivation, and feeds you alienation and acute psychic and physical pain, instead. The burden of pain becomes unbearable and you might snap.
Better have your support system in order. Better have the best psychiatrist who will personally answer the phone 24 hours. Better have the best psychologist who will respond to you immediately when you express distress. Better have a handful of friends who have gone through what you are going through and who will be on call and watch and catch you.
But most important of all to your wellness is your acceptance of a serious medical condition that will not disappear or go away, or think you can outsmart it and can pretend it’s not there – a serous medical illness that is chronic and requires continual observation and swift responses from those who truly love and care about you. And who want you to stick around.
