Vacancy (like a hotel sign, get it ;-)) *insert groan here ______*

I've recently started a new medication in addition to the 200mg of Zoloft (maximum therapeutic dose) I have been taking since last July. Apparently cutting deeply enough to require stitches is something to be worried about... especially when it happens about three weeks in a row.

I'd started on 150 mg of Wellbutrin and spent the first couple weeks exceedingly anxious (a possible side effect). During this time I cut deeply enough on my wrist to necessitate a trip to the ER where I was stitched up and narrowly escaped the confines of a psychiatric ward. I told my therapist that Monday who told other medical staff at some meeting they have to discuss some (not all) of their clients/patients. At my meds appointment that week my Wellbutrin got bumped up to 300 mg and I was told it would go up to 450 mg (maximum therapeutic dose) this week.

Why in the world did I just tell you all about my meds? Should you care? Probably not. And what has it got to do with the title anyway? Let me tell you.

I've been taking the Wellbutrin for almost a month, four days at 300 mg, and I've noticed something. My mood is different. Thoughts of suicide and self injury (for me that's cutting and occasionally burning), while present, appear as ghosts, slightly distressing but not as before. But something else has changed. I've become, for the most part, flat. Colorless, without that spark that animates us as humans. Where as before feelings were hard to recognize, sometimes hard to even feel, I still had my constant Companions Out of Sorts, Lousy, Awful, and Beyond Awful, reminding me that I was human, that I DID feel, that, while Broken, Damaged, I was still able to exist alongside my fellow homo sapien sapiens with a passable disguise that sometimes even fooled myself. Now I seem to be cut off from one of the things that makes us uniquely human: feeling. Don't get me wrong, I get short bursts of feeling often during the day, my Companions reminding me that they are still with me beneath the medicated mantel that has enveloped me. But is that enough? Just a glimpse, just a whisper of reeling? I'll tell you something, it isn't enough for me. I had a relatively good friend pass away this last Friday. She was 24. 24 year olds are not supposed to die, especially of uterine cancer. Know what? I haven't shed a tear. I've not actually FELT bad. Intellectually I know I should. I've had memories come to mind that would usually be accompanied by a torrent of tears. Nothing. Absolute Nothing.

So, two medications (and months of counseling) later I am no longer plagued with the suicidal thoughts and urges to self injure nearly as much as before. But at what cost?

I think, maybe, I would rather stop taking my medication and welcome back my Companions than continue to stay flat, colorless, life less. Maybe out of fear of the unknown? I have lived with these Friends for so long I must admit to some nervousness about life without them. But that is for a later blog...