Welcome to 2023

I don't know about you but this is the year I'm switching it up. No more worrying about money. That's right, I tweeted to the Prime Minister that I'm going to need a guaranteed annual income in 2024. I didn't specify the amount but I assume he knows it should be at least $25K.

I googled the medication I started taking a couple of weeks ago. It's turns out to be prozac. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (1994) immediately came to mind, of course, and so I googled it. The reviews were mixed but also uniform in that the reviewers all found it "self-absorbed" (i.e. "first world problem") and it occurred to me, well yes, we know. Or, at least, some of us know. Some others of our selves have become so absorbed we're suffocating.

That's how I think of the panic attacks I started having in the spring. I'd have a perfectly nice outing with friends only to barely make it home, the feeling of dread and nausea permeating every last cell of my body on the bus, the only cure a terrifying purging broken up by what seem like interminable stretches of time lying on the cool bathroom floor feeling alienated from everyone and everything, no comfort to be had until it's over.

There are lots of possibilities as to why this is happening, although why it's happening now is a bit of a mystery to me. Not my doctor I'm lucky enough to have, however. They're the result of anxiety, a build up of it. Meanwhile, I was so used to it I actually heard myself claim in his office, "I'm not really an anxious person". Then I immediately corrected the lie "I don't know why I just said that - I'm the most anxious person I know. I've always been anxious. About everything. I'm anxious right now you won't believe I need help and I'm going to die having a panic attack."

They're very debilitating. Even the relief after they're over is just exhaustion striped with worry about when the next one will happen.

So I'm on medication for the first time in my life. Sober as a judge (again) because it suits me best, focused on right now. Never mind tomorrow - it's not real. The same goes for the past. It's not real either, just a made up story I've been telling myself, over and over and over and over and over and over...

I'm in my sixth decade and only just now realize my brain is part of my body. Also, I'm only in my head, I'm not in yours. And for whatever reason in this first world of ours my fight or flight response is way out of whack and I need medication now to treat my hurting brain.

It's early days but I think I may be on to something already. All my life, right up until now, I've thought I had to answer to somebody, so self-absorbed I didn't realize that somebody is me. Interestingly, as soon as I realized it, I could feel my lens starting to turn. Instead of just relentlessly staring in, it took a curious look out.

Again, early days, but here's to a new year and new beginnings anyway.