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.

kroger

Dingy light skirts the grocery aisles with a darting hesitance. She flickers. Climbing out from the long poles of white ceiling structure, light skitters. Bags of Tender Tiny Peas, Tasty Kakes, rye bread, and prepackaged sushi swirl around in an identical mass. None of them are any less illuminated and together they stand, separate but equal. She fingers each crack of the bag of Tiny Tenders until the shadows are no more than thinly observed lines. Its contagious glow is stark by nature. Blinding, but fleeting and in an instant its tiny flickers will become one long feeling of dark freezer aisle isolation. The winter section.

The Funeral

You can't always tell what kind of funeral it's going to be by the cars people drive. There could be a million Volvos and Audi's but undoubtably there's always the few clunkers that park off street.  The real way you can tell is by the clothing and the funeral home. If it's in a Catholic church, I dress up - shawl included. If it's one of those places off the side of the highway, I choose a tasteful, dark, pant suit or a dark blue dress. This service is in a home I'm not familiar with in a location that is near the country club, but not far away from the fishing docks either. I dressed in my black conservative dress with minimal jewelry. 

It started about a month ago when I lost my job as a therapist. It was a cozy private practice with patients that I had known for years. Their problems at times seemed trivial, but I never talked down to them. Instead I had coached them through their relationship problems and work stresses with equal stride. When they politely broached the subject of leaving therapy, I would always smile and say 'If that's what you really want.' They never did. Whether they benefited or not, I was never entirely sure. Although one can always feel helpful, progress is another thing all together. Once the job was gone, I felt the absence of problems run dry and an emptiness lived on past my patients.  Without that special place and time for darker moments, I found the emptiness taking over spaces of my life like an amoeba. It was then that I started seeking comfort elsewhere.

I stepped out of my car into a rain that had been drizzling all morning only to see a group of melancholy guests walking toward the funeral home. A man in a dark rain jacket looked solemnly in my direction before nodding. I nodded back, still unaware of what to say.

"It's around the corner and to the back," a woman in a formal dress and pearls ushered me inside. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

As I walked to the back of the hall, I heard a voice talking in a well-thought-out rhythm about God and the after life. The room in the back was large, but there were no pews available. A few metal folding chairs sat off to the left, but they too were taken up by men in dark, heavy, raincoats. A few teenagers in baggy dark jeans and black slickers stood off to the side. There were only a dozen or so women there and I felt more out of place than usual standing by myself in the back.

"We know that a man as great as Matthew will have no worries where he has gone," the woman in the pulpit rattled on. I looked over my shoulder as the group from outside huddled near me. It was a younger group, but I couldn't make out their exact ages by the way their faces were drawn. They weren't the kind that was used to being solemn and I could see that their faces still had traces of acne scattered about their cheeks and noses. 

"How did you know, Matthew?" The man in the raincoat whispered beside me.

"Through John."

He nodded confidently. This was a satisfactory answer. After a few minutes, the woman ended her speech and stepped into the front aisle. A tall man and older woman came up to the stage and through tears, mumbled through a piece of paper they shared. "Matthew was the best son any parents could have had..." The woman began to tremble.

He must have been very young. A car crash perhaps or maybe a freak boating accident. Perhaps when he was a child he thought he could have been a fisherman like his father, but his temperment was too soft. Being laughed at for gentle hands and a quiet affect must have given him the fuel he needed to start his career by the docks. I could still smell the salty ocean air from inside the home.

The lighting was fluorescent and seemed daunting compared to the room full of darkness. I could recognize their pain as something charged and flowing from person to person. It was as if a magnetic shadow had melted into everyone's face until the only thing left un-touched was the coffin that stood open in the front. If the coffin weren't there, it would just be a room full of grief with nothing tangible to hold on to. It would be a moment of unexplained depression that seeped in where no one expected it, leaving the feelings unrescued and floating. 

It was a short service and after everyone had a chance to talk, two people at a time walked up the casket and placed flowers inside. The mother and father went first and then what I presumed as the rest of the family followed suit. A tall and lanky boy of about sixteen went up to the coffin with a girl of about nine and I wondered if they were too young to see this. Something as gloomy as death should be reserved for those old enough to feel it.

The man in the raincoat took my arm and we walked together up to the casket. His arm was electrifying as I was unaccustomed to people noticing me in these situations. He smelt vaguely of after shave, but I wondered if he was old enough to use it.  The group he had come with stood huddled together in the back, not daring to move. I wondered if perhaps he didn't want them to see his emotions or that maybe he just found more comfort in a stranger. 

I peered into the casket to see a boy of about eighteen wearing a brown suit and brown shoes lying there with his eyes closed. His face was blushed with funeral makeup, making him look fresh out of the womb. I wondered how all these people knew him and what he was like. Was he ambitious or slack? Cute or tough? His presence oddly satisfied me and for a brief moment I didn't have to think about the pain of losing my job. 

"This doesn't even look like him," the man whispered to me.

"No," I stared at the youthful body with rumpled blonde hair. "Certainly not."