rough draft memoir paxil

If May 8th, 2002  had never happened my life would be totally different. I would most likely be a highly successful business woman in NYC living out of a high-rise eating donuts on a china plate. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way. I say May 8th was the turning point not because it sounds more mysterious but because nobody wanted to talk about what really happened. After 'the incident' happened it was always known as May 8th.   This was the night I had sobbed into the portable phone to my best friend Anna while listening to Alison Krauss on my bedroom stereo, trying to end my life. Perhaps I wasn't sobbing - perhaps I was eating a sandwich. Perhaps I was a million miles away.

 This was where I seemed to be most of the time since starting the medication Paxil three months prior. I was in the 9th grade and school wasn't so bad. It was gym class that killed me. The changing in front of girls, the humiliation of my learning disability in full view of every bounced ball off my head, the fact I hated running; all of these played major factors.  I began growing anxious of everything and couldn't stop thinking about the class and my eventual doom. When I told my Dad of the terrors of entering the cafeteria and experiencing eyes all on me (what I then thought was surely unique just to me) he immediately leaned onto the edge of the sofa and asked in his calm and understanding tone 'tell me more.'

"Well you see there's all these tables and everyone at different tables belongs to different cliques and they all have these social rankings," I did my best to detail him in on the complexities of high school life which were really quite a lot better than junior high. With his keen attention I felt important and empowered to talk more about my nightmarish experiences through the public school social ranking system.  

"I eat my lunch with my friends, but I can't help but getting nervous whenever I walk through there to meet them. I have to walk all the way through the cafeteria just to get to there and it's a long walk."

"Would you say your heart beats rapidly?" He clasped his hands in front of his knee.

"Definitely."

"Do you get sweaty palms?"

"Absolutely."

"Do you feel like you're going to die?"

"Oh yeah," I nod enthusiastically. School was dreadful.

"Well, Al," he slapped his knee, "you've got all the classic signs of social anxiety disorder."

"What's that?" I asked.

"That can be a very serious illness. But…" he looked far out the glass slider to the hill that our apartment stretched over. "I might know someone who can help."

Two weeks after the conversation in my Dad's living room, I was sitting across from someone who worked for my Dad. He was a nice, mousy looking man with a receding hairline and pants that rode up too high, exposing his socks. He sat cross legged and pressed his hands together inside his thighs. I thought this was disgusting. 

He asked me the same questions Dad had asked and within a half hour he prescribed me a drug called Paxil for anxiety. I was overjoyed. My teenage angst would disappear with just one little pill a day. Immediately I called Anna to tell her the news. She seemed skeptical at first, but I reassured her that it was for the best and that really my anxiety was far worse than most. She just didn't understand the complications of my brain. 

After a week of taking it, Dad would ask me questions about the medicine. Was I feeling it yet? Did I have any side effects? What was it like? With someone else as enthusiastic as I was, I felt that I had a partner in this endeavor.  While my mother was also skeptical, I didn't pay as much attention to her worry as I did my father's interest. With his undivided attention, I knew nothing bad could happen.

After three weeks of taking it, I noticed that I didn't care as much. I didn't care as much about the cafeteria or gym class or what people thought of me. But I also didn't care what anyone thought of me. During one conversation that a friend had about her boyfriend, I got up and left, not having any attachment whatsoever to my friend or the conversation.  Anna noticed me dipping out of conversations more and more and chased me down.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

I looked at her, but she was a million miles away. She lived on a different platform of life and I was so far beyond everything, I felt as if they were in a bubble and I was in space. I smiled and said sure and then walked to my locker where I stayed for two hours, not caring that I cut class or that I had nowhere to go.

After a few months of Paxil I was completely gone. My friends seemed like a distant reminder of a life I once had and my family had become part of the bubble as well. Except for Dad. He kept asking me if my anxiety was down and I said that yes - it was. The pill was a success.

It was a success until May 8th.  I left a note on my desk for my mother, what it said I can't remember. Something horribly dramatic I'm sure. And with that I took a large quantity of Ibuprofen and called Anna. When I refused to let her talk to my Mom, she said goodbye and we hung up. I got ready for bed and fell asleep shortly after. Anna called back however, and my Mom answered.  Completely confused, Mom rushed into my bedroom and woke me up saying we were going to the hospital.