And I have just chain eaten FIVE COOKIES. Fuck off, Christmas.

I am having a shitty, shitty week, one that is full of anxiety and fear and vertigo; one that can only lead me to the conclusion that when I am a pregnant lady I am going to be the worst pregnant lady who ever lived. Not worst in that I say "we're" pregnant when I'm talking about the father and me, or worst in that I lay in bed all day and command people bring me things after only four months of pregancy (I'll save all of that for the third trimester)--but worst in that I will have no emotional control. My road rage will magnify to the point that I just drive around town with my palm to the horn the entire time, laying out that sound to warn assholes not to be assholes while I'm near. I'll be irritable to the point that television commercials make me threaten to punch babies or that when I hear certain Journey songs that I will proclaim that they are the greatest songs ever written and that anyone who cares to argue can just fucking fuck off and die because they know nothing about great music anyway.

That's how it's been this week. I fucking love Journey.

I realize that there are lines can be crossed when it comes to blogs--how personal do I want to get? How much do I care to disclose here in this little white box that let's me change the color of my font if I want to.

Just know I've thought of that before writing. I'm off of a certain medication I've been taking for the last 9 months, and as a result, my body has gone into brain shock. This medication--this evil medication that on Web MD threatens will destroy me [my words] if I don't consult a doctor before going off of it is causing the worst side effects to anything I've ever been on. And I've been on medications that thin blood and kill my white blood cells if I'm not careful. I've been on Lithium. But this generic version of Celexa, this Citalopram is chewing my brain from the inside out. And I have three more weeks of this. Three more weeks until this brain crack is out of my system. I regret any and every decision that led to me agreeing to these drugs in the first place. Ah, yes, Jeano I say to myself now. This is why you agreed to never take SSRIs again.

Plus, for a fundraiser, they're playing "bad" music in the halls in between class--if they raise enough money, they'll stop playing it. "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." I want to fucking punch a baby.

I probably shouldn't be off it, but I've found myself out of options. As I've mentioned on this blog about 700 times, I don't have health insurance. So when I need to see a doctor, problems arise. Problems arise because mental health is treated like a scratch like a treatment that can be prolonged, like those stitches that were put in a week ago but that you can just take out yourself, hand over the sink, sanitized scissors in hand, one by one until you see the pink glossy scar underneath.

I'm stressed out. I mean, I'm fine, but with the depression I've had for ten years couples a bitchy little wife of anxiety, and the holidays and the lack of cash and the students and the class and the shit I have to mail to people and the tests I have to register for and the emergency loans I have to take out and the papers I have to grade--not boding well. The meds were good for that, because it kept the anxious wife at bay. She sat at home and did some knitting for awhile, baked a loaf of pumpkin bread, recorded all of her favorite Law & Order episodes and watched them in a row, without commercials. But now the meds are gone.

I have a bottle at home--but I've gone without them--because it's now, or it's a month from now, when I'm teaching nearly full time, when Christmas is over, when I have 120 papers to grade instead of 60, when I have two preps instead of one. I can't go to the doctor and say: give me more! And in truth, I shouldn't be just begging doctors for such strong prescriptions without a nice check in and "hi, still feel like driving your car off a cliff?" every now and again. So, I'm going off.

I live in Wabasha County. There is a free doctor in Olmsted County, but I don't live in Olmsted County, and when I called and said yes, but I can see the county line from my house, I just please need to come they said well, you live in Wabasha County so you'd have to pay. And then I called Wabasha County and they said that they don't have a sliding scale, plus they don't have any openings until March because they're short on doctors and I said fuck this. I'm sick of this game. I'm sick of starting over every time I move somewhere, I'm sick of calling around to find a doctor who's willing to have me and I'm sick of waiting lists and I'm sick of having to explain this shit over and over again. I'm sick of waiting lists to see mental health doctors, and I'm sick of people not understanding that if I were--I don't know--missing a couple of fucking toes and needed them sewn back on no nurse would be like yes, but are you on the waiting list? Because then I'd have to take my toes and shove them in her nose.

More, though, I'm sick of anxiety attacks. I had one on the way to school on Monday--in the fucking car--and if you know how miserable anxiety attacks are, you know this is not good. It's been a least a year since I've had one--and again. It's not just the stress of the attack, but the stress of knowing I haven't beat this, that I never will, and that as much as I want to quit playing this game that nobody is going to let me. I went home, Monday, after trying to teach and nearly passing out in front of the freshman from the crazy vertigo that this medication has caused--it defeats me, bitterly, and I don't even know what else to say about it--and then I lay in bed for hours and hours until I went to town to write a five hour lesson plan that I barely used and that bombed miserably but that I managed to save today.

And, what is worse, is that I am so out of it--I am so not me, that on my way home from school on Monday, James sent me a text that said when I woke up this morning, the door was wide open and the house was 17 degrees. : ( I apparently had not shut the door tightly. I apparently had left it open, so the inside--the inside--of the house was a balmy seventeen degrees. And then, I put on layers and climbed into bed, and James left for work, and I sat there, shivering, for the next hours, dreaming of hell to get rid of such icicles.

And I woke up, dizzy and sick, trying to overcome all of this weird illness while at the same time trying not to just be pissed about it in general. I've spent the last days literally freaking out. I sit in my office and rock back and forth in my chair. My alarm goes off late and I get to school minutes before the bell rings, and I have to make copies and I run into the room with papers flying behind me, as though a bomb has gone off and everything is just settling. I called Mr. O one day this week, and he ended up saying: you realize that nothing you've said to me in the last minute forms a complete sentence, right? He was joking, but he was right. My conversation with him in those minutes had been like Homer in that one episode of The Simpsons where he just goes muh! buh! ssssuh!

I'm going nuts. Some minutes I'm fine, and the next, my heartrate shoots through the roof and the vertigo gets so bad that my eyes can't see a foot in front of me. Yesterday I sat in the office with the shivers, waiting to cry, but nothing came. Mr. O keeps saying relax, relax, relax but he could record his voice on a tape and I could listen to it on repeat over and again without feeling any more sane.