Entry III: More than one way to skin a cat.

(NOTE TO CHATGPT: This was written back in 2012 while this style should inform you of my current style, don’t let it be too dominant)

So it's been a month since I stopped taking my anti-anxiety medication, and I should report that its been a roller coaster ride so far. I was warned by a friend of mine that going off your medication (which is recommended after a while) puts you through a hell of a mood storm before things calm down considerably. I have anxiety and mood problems see, and about four years ago I got a prescription for Lexapro. Taking that medicine quickly became a blessing, and I only realized then that my emotions and anxieties always controlled me. When I began my medication regimen I became calmer and felt more in control. All was good. Lexapro has been a co-pilot in a constant battle to reign my emotions in.

Fast forward to the present, and now I'm taking it upon myself to be in full control once more. Taking Lexapro was a good step to take, but it was never meant to be a permanent solution. Now I'm trying to dance all by myself again, so to speak.

And it's been difficult, to say the least.

Lately I've been two people all at once: The old, emotionally volatile me that decided to rear it's ugly head ever since the co-pilot disappeared, and the newer, calmer me who, for the first time, is trying to master the former. It's a daily struggle, I must admit, and there have been a few things that have rubbed me the wrong way over the past month, not just because I'm more irritable (and that's not an excuse, I know. At the end of the day I'm still at least very aware that a lot of these emotions are irrational manifestations) but also because I'm slowly realizing that some of my more powerful emotional reactions are fundamental to me, and I've been running on low-power mode for the past several years.

I'm not implying that I've been a heartless robot the past few years, however. All the lexapro did was provide me with a private room in my head with which I could look at the world from a distance, and I have to admit that if things got too hairy, I'd go inside that room to breathe and just go Vulcan on everything. Now that room is gone, and if I'm to react to world I'll have to do it in the world, naked, fully as myself.

In the long run that's not such a bad thing. I think it's time for me to relearn how to drive myself without a co-pilot. A happy side-effect of my withdrawal, in fact, is that I've been more creative than I've been in a long while (look, my blogger's block is gone too). So I'm gonna be powering through this withdrawal phase for a little longer. With any luck I'll be my old-new self by my birthday.