sometimes it's hard

I am going to start a blog back up again, because I think it will help me break through some things.  I used to be really active blogging about different things that interested me or sparked some thought in me, but that all changed a couple of years ago when I went through a major depression.  That depression sealed me up away from other people.  When I entered the depression, I shut off all of my online presence and started packing up my things, both metaphorically and physically.  I was very depressed for about eight months, and then one day I felt my brain stop functioning (of course, it didn't really stop functioning, it was that a part of my brain shut off). 

What happened was that I got really, really angry with an old friend from my childhood.  He had said all of these homophobic things online and I just exploded at him.  And of course no one likes being reprimanded, so he fired back at me and it was clear to me that he didn't care about my friendship, didn't care about my feelings, and didn't care at all about establishing a general sense of justice in the world.  That night I screamed and tore at my hair, sobbed into my pillow and mourned everything I had lost from my emergence into adulthood.  

The next day, my brain was shut off.  What little feeling that had been left during the depression was gone.  Everything around me moved very, very slowly, and I could barely hear what anyone around me was saying.  I had zero thoughts in my head and I couldn't truly focus on anyone's eyes when they spoke to me.  I know that that day was the sickest day of my life, but even then there was a tiny little spark inside me that wouldn't die.  I knew I had to ask for help.

A coworker helped me find a doctor on a website and I went to him.  I surrendered myself to him completely, saying "Something is very wrong in my brain and I can't take care of myself anymore."  I desperately wanted him to give me pills, because that is the only thing that I knew would help me.  No amount of prayer or talking about my problems was going to help me at that point.  My brain was just too far gone. 

He was a very kind man who listened to my problems and gave me a prescription for a very good drug.  I started feeling the effects of the drug almost immediately- vertigo, headaches, and enhanced auditory perception.  About two weeks in, my brain began to function again.  I was THINKING again, for the first time in almost a year.  At the time, I likened it to the sensation of thinking in straight lines, after a lifetime of thinking in endless circles.  The drug I was taking is also used for ADHD and for getting people to quit smoking, so I had a lot of unintended good effects.  For the first time in my life, I felt FOCUSED.  (I had never realized how distractable I was.)  I also didn't feel like eating compulsively, which I think is from the anti-smoking use of the drug.

I was on the drug for almost a year, and then gradually weaned myself off of the drug.  Today I feel very good, like I still think in straight lines, but I still have a strange barrier towards other people.  I don't reach out to other people instinctively the way I used to.  I have to make myself engage with them.  I want to be close to people again, but it's weird that it doesn't come naturally to me anymore.