Holy shit, y’all––it’s been a doozy of a few weeks. In the midst of the continued grief, anger, and heartbreak over the melodramatic (re)rupture that happened with my person at the end of January, I was displaced from my apartment for a bit as a situation with my neighbor escalated to a point where I felt overwhelmed and unsafe. (I’ll write about it another time, because the whole thing actually does relate to my purpose here on Substack, and it brought up some very complicated things for me.)
Those events ended up delaying my plans to finally start a very gradual taper off my stimulant med again (which I so desperately want to be OFF of, omfg 😣 …but I know all too well this isn’t a process you can rush with a brain this broken).
Anyway, writing has been hard, but I’m doing okay. More or less.
While I was in exile at an Airbnb a few miles away, I got to explore some picturesque, new-to-me country roads after a snowstorm, and ended up recording this bit of the title track from Brandi Carlile’s Returning to Myself album. (The only country singer I’m more obsessed with than Alison Krauss is Brandi Carlile, for whatever that’s worth 🙃)
I just love this song. It fills me with this achingly beautiful sadness, longing, and hope all at once. The lyrics remind me of just how lonely the psych med withdrawal journey is. How hard and painful it is. How the only way to get through it and finally heal involves turning your focus inward and committing to radical self-love.
The journey to discovering my authentic self has cost me more than I thought was even possible to lose in such a short timespan: family, friends, partner. Job, career. Longterm financial security. Home, community. Best friend and soul mate.
And yet, in the empty spaces where all those things once were, beneath the grief and the rage and the fear, something new is taking shape. An identity that feels like it might be mine. A self I’m starting to recognize and believe in.
It seems like a lot of the folks in the psych med withdrawal community have at least some benchmark for what they are returning to––they remember who they were, before the meds. But I don’t have that. I mean, I have memories of the smart, artsy, weird, sassy, and very dysregulated 16-year-old I was when my mother took me to a psychiatrist who labeled it “depression” and put me on Prozac. But over the 30+ years that followed, that person was somehow lost in the endless string of psychiatric trials and errors: higher doses, different drugs, switching drug classes, polypharmacy. And I never felt what I would call “better.” I was always performing, struggling to cope, exhausted, emotionally numb, burned out, lying to myself and everyone around me about who I really was. Because I didn’t even know.
The longterm effects of more than three decades of psych meds finally caught up with me around the same time I was starting to realize that I had been medicated as a teenager for unrecognized neurodivergence and trauma. I knew I had to find out who I was, underneath it all... And even though the psychiatrists managed to injure my brain and nervous system repeatedly with their ignorance about safe, slow deprescribing, I’m just as determined as ever to taper off this fucking Vyvanse. And one day, a few years from now, I'll swallow the last fucking little bead of Effexor. In the meantime, I know my healing depends on whether or not I can figure out how to love the person I’m becoming.
And so, with thanks to my growing network of healing buddies around the world––along with bittersweet gratitude to the human I keep calling my person, who was the first to know and love this new, authentic version of me––here is most of what I have gathered there is to love about me now, as I continue to break free from the meds that stole whoever “myself” is from me for all those years:
I have a certain energy people notice about me. I light up the room. I draw people out of their shells. People say I’m “magnetic.”
I’m quite expressive about my inner world, eager to share my thoughts, emotions, opinions, stories, memories, etc. People never have to guess how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking––it all, um, comes out sideways 🙃
I’m the bravest person everyone knows. I show up in the world as this fearless badass, who just does the thing, tells the truth, doesn’t give two fucks what people think, and deals with the consequences later.
I’m also the strongest person everyone knows. I bounce back like fucking memory foam. Every time.
I have a potty mouth, which I either can’t control or don’t care to.
I’m unapologetically open about my journey––the good, the bad, the ugly.
I’m intense, quirky, offbeat, and unpredictable in a way people seem to find adorable.
I can be pretty damn funny. I love being goofy and weird, and I will say (or type) just about anything to crack people up.
I’m a creative thinker, with this filing cabinet of a brain that connects the dots in an instant. I see patterns no one else does.
I have a unique sense of style, which I’ll say is still evolving––but people say that I’m rocking the shaved head and my newest tattoo (a rainbow-colored snake 😜). And the word I keep hearing is “gorgeous.”
I’m idealistic and driven by my deeply held humanistic values and progressive world view. Some day I will be a change-maker. Maybe blow some some shit up to make room for the better world I envision.
I’m a free spirit who lets my huge, wild heart guide me to the places, the people, and the things that will feed my soul. That will invite me in and appreciate me for who I am––the authentic self I am becoming.
I’m loyal, attentive, generous, honest, and fiercely committed to people I care about. I’m all about unconditional positive regard. And when I love someone, I love them hard.
I’m persistent––stubborn, even––when it comes to hope for healing from psych med withdrawal. I know I’m gonna heal from this one day, and no one can convince me otherwise.
(Wow, that little self-love fest was actually pretty hard to type without qualifying or devolving into self-deprecating goofiness… Seriously, y’all should try it sometime.)
So that’s where I am with the “hard to love” theme, which has been such a goddamn monkey on my back for so long, especiallly since I started coming off the meds. I’ve clearly made some progress, but I often feel quite fragile about it all. I’m guessing it will just take time.
Finally, I want to end this post with this collective poem that happened during a Zoom gathering with some of my healing buddies a few months ago. Everyone added a line in honor of my “rebirth-day,” marking one year since I decided to cast off my old identity that no longer fit, so I could become the person I was supposed to be. (And I just love these people, btw.)
A Collective Rebirth Poem Wild. Wild like me. You are a cool person. I like your hat. And you’re rockin’ it. You are wearing eyeliner. I noticed the eyeliner. You seem more at ease and in your skin. It’s your energy––I feed off of it. It’s fabulous. I admire your ability to shed your skin. And to embrace transformation. Your eagerness. And how you are unafraid to put the past behind you. You are unapologetically yourself throughout everything. A total badass. You are a badass. Nice getting to know you. Thank you for being my friend.
…Amen, y’all. 💜
So yeah. Authenticity really does apparently cost fucking everything.
Returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do
But it’s the only thing to do…
And I know it will be worth it, in the end.
