A Remedy for Resolution

Summary

The author is embarking on a journey to improve their mental health by starting medication, marking a significant shift from their previous reluctance, and signaling a hopeful commitment to self-care and recovery in the new year.

Abstract

In the face of persistent mental health struggles, the author has decided to embrace a new approach to managing their condition. Traditionally averse to making New Year's resolutions, they have been inspired to change their stance due to the profound impact of mental illness on their life. The author reflects on the debilitating effects of anxiety and depression, likening the experience to having one's mouth bolted shut, unable to express true emotions. Despite the benefits of therapy, they acknowledge that additional measures are necessary. The prospect of medication, once met with fear and denial, is now seen as a potentially life-saving step. The author confronts their fears about side effects and the uncertainty of treatment, recognizing that their concern for their well-being is a testament to self-worth that depression has tried to diminish. With the new year, they resolve to start medication, not just as a treatment but as a means to regain control, rediscover their identity, and challenge the lies perpetuated by depression about their self-worth.

Opinions

Mental illness has robbed the author of years of their life and their sense of identity.
The author compares the struggle with mental health to being unable to take a deep breath, symbolizing the inability to express or release emotions healthily.
While acknowledging the importance of therapy, the author believes that it may not always be sufficient on its own.
There is a significant fear and resistance towards the idea of taking medication, stemming from concerns about side effects and the potential for a lifetime of trial and error.
The author recognizes that their consideration of medication is a sign that they care about themselves more than they realized.
Depression has led the author to believe falsehoods about their worth, including that they are undeserving of care and that self-hatred is a rational response to life.
The decision to start medication represents a turning point, symbolizing hope and the desire to take control of their mental health and life.
The author views the act of breathing in the cold winter air as a metaphor for the potential release from emotional toxicity that medication might bring.

In response to Coffee Challenge: Why I want to be a better me in 2022

Usually, I am not the resolutions type, but this year is different. This year it could change my life.

Mental illnesses take so much from us. Personally, I feel as if I’ve lost countless years and my identity to the sickness in my head. So many afternoons wasting away on a couch, and nights that never seem to offer any rest. Moments of relief do wiggle their way through, like seeing one’s breath in the cold. I can literally perceive my exhalation sprawl out into the arctic air and enjoy watching it become an invisible force of dissipating emotional toxicity.

Suffering under anxiety, depression, and all their nasty bedfellows is like having my mouth bolted shut, disallowing me from taking those big breaths, instead of swallowing it back down into my belly for it to become the bile that sustains the thoughts, chemicals, and feelings that encompass my mental anguish. Acidic spurts of self-loathing and rib-kicking that only cease long enough to trick me into thinking I have it under control.

Now, I understand more of what makes me tick, and what my individual struggle with mental health is. The humanoid machinations at play click and turn their cogs in just enough of the wrong ways to keep me from truly living my life.

I forget how to laugh without it needing to be a balm or to smile and not think about how fleeting such happiness is and to constantly try and anticipate when the next episode will be or what will trigger my nerves now. Dealing with mental illness is like partaking in the world’s most difficult chess game without ever being asked, and certainly without ever being taught how to play.

Therapy is great, therapy is necessary, and therapy is something I advocate for all, but sometimes it is not enough. I think I realized this a bit ago but did not want to accept it. The discussions around medication have arisen time and again, only for me to waffle around until I stomped the notion out. The embers remained, however, and so those discussions would come again. Around and around, I’ve gone like this denying myself a reality that seems too scary for me to grapple with.

Medication is fantastic, vital even, and it’s a damn miracle that such medicine even exists. I am not here to dismiss its importance, nor do I disbelieve in them, but that’s for other people. You want antidepressants, hell yeah, good on you! When the invitation lands on my proverbial desk, I’m all too quick to toss it into the bin.

Simply, or not so simply, I carry around a lot of fear about the prospect of taking them. Will I have horrific side effects? Will those side effects be worth it? Will it even do what it’s supposed to? Am I doomed to be in an infinite form of trial and error for the rest of my life? Can my body handle that? The questions never end, and neither does my concern. This shows me something though — I care about myself a lot more than I thought I did.

Depression lies. A common refrain we all know by now. One of the tallest tales my depression has led me to believe is that I just suck. I’m a worthless human being, who’s only rational response to being alive is to hate myself, and if I hate myself then why do I care what happens to me? When I consider medication, for how fraught that is, it shows me in flashing, bright lights that that is not the case. That is not true and is in fact, one of the deepest fabrications depression has ever told me.

Going forward, that’s exactly what I plan to do — go forward. Ringing in a new year has never meant all that much to me, I knew it would always just be another turn of the sun thick with mental turmoil, and so what was the point in ever hoping for more? This year I finally want something different for myself, this year I resolve to start medication. It’s not just that though, is it? It’s starting to gain control back. It’s starting to find me again. It’s starting to undo the foul stench that has lingered far too long around me.

So, the next time I enter into the winter air and exhale outward, that’s all it will be. No sighs of relief, or profound examinations of ridding this poison from my body. Instead, it will just be my breath and me, in full embrace of knowing we may have saved a life.