The condensed version of this post is, basically:

I had a good weekend.

The long version is:

Wednesday night I took my last Cymbalta.  My primary care doctor recommended I switch my anti-depressants in order to fix everything that was wrong with me.  My endocrinologist explained that yeah, actually, Lexapro is probably a better drug for someone like me.   I put off making the change because anti-depressants are expensive as hell and I couldn’t stomach the idea of throwing away $4 pills in bulk.  Because I am frugal to a fault.

Last week I decided that this was fucking insanity and that if there was any chance that switching my medication would help, it was probably time for me to stop putting my health and quality of life off in the interest of saving a buck.  Or, as the case may be, a lot of bucks.

My mom, who is a registered nurse and currently working on her master’s degree, helped me research the best way to switch from Cymbalta to Lexapro because “oh, you know, cut back on the Cymbalta and then, you know, start the new medicine” wasn’t quite as instructional as I would have hoped.  Especially when I found out that you can actually fucking overdose on seratonin and maybe it would be good to have some specifics in mind before you start messing with drugs that can kill you.

In a nutshell, we figured out what the half life was of Cymbalta and learned that about 75% of the drug would be completely out of my system within 48 hours.  I gave myself 72 hours just to be safe and prayed to God that I would not have some kind of episode in the meantime.

I spent most of Saturday cleaning Emma’s room, a job I had started the weekend before but walked away from half way through because OH MY GOD CLEANING IS SO OVERWHELMING!  I’m not sure if I would have been able to finish it on my own, but I didn’t have to.  Jared stayed by my side all day and I swear to God that man is like oxygen to me sometimes.  With his help, I managed to clear out all her old toys, throw away hundreds of tiny pieces of LORD KNOWS WHAT and convert her previous disaster zone into a little girl’s bedroom.

I cooked dinner Saturday night.

All by myself.

Later that night, the four of us laid in my bed together and went through dozens and dozens of Kidz Bop songs on Jared’s iPhone.  Emma dance and Devin rolled his eyes and Jared did his best to convince Devin that the greatest music in the world was written between 1971 and 1989.  I laughed and watched them and thought, again, dear God let this be the kind of thing that they all remember.

I took my first Lexapro Saturday night.

I woke up Sunday morning and felt… awake.  I laid in my bed for a moment and mentally braced myself for the sense of dread that often accompanies having to sit up and actually get out of bed.  When it didn’t come, I put my feet on the ground and slowly made my way to the bathroom, wondering if the lethargy would hit before or after I’d made it through a shower.

It never came.

I surveyed my house and my fridge and my long mental checklist of things that needed to be taken care of.  The wheels began to spin, faster and faster, as I plotted all of the things I would do with the day’s energy.

I need to clean out Devin’s room!  I need to get him a new bed!  I need to go grocery shopping!  We need to do laundry!  And maybe I can paint the three bathroom’s in my house because HOLY HELL I DO NOT FEEL LIKE TAKING A NAP YET!

free hills have eyes the And then I considerd the fact that maybe I should calm the fuck down.

“Jared, what do you want to do today?”

We took our coffee mugs out on to the back porch and tossed around a few ideas.  I sat and breathed and one by one let go of all my expectations for the day.  I reminded myself that there would be more days.

Somewhere amidst all that breathing and internal staving off of overachievement, we decided that Jared would take Devin to go play paintball and I would take Emma shopping.  We broke the news to Emma and I assured her that she was not being excluded from paintball because she was a girl, but because she was simply not old enough or big enough yet.  She grudgingly agreed to try and enjoy herself with me.

Emma and I shopped for 6 hours.

Of course, that included a long lunch over pizza slices the size of her head, a stint in the mall’s play area, and a cup of triple chocolate ice cream followed by a spit bath in the foodcourt.  It also included that four year old sucking me – and my wallet – dry because I was so damn excited that she wanted clothes out of the little girl’s section that I happily bought pretty much anything that she promised to wear out in public.

I also bought one pair of pajamas from the little boy’s section, because she is still Emma and princesses and rainbows on a set of pajamas does seem like overkill.

Man, we had a great time together.  We stripped down in dressing rooms and took turns showing off new outfits in front of the mirrors.  We stopped in every shoe department we passed and oohed and ahhhed over pink high top sneakers and sparkly flip flops.  We touched every single item in the Disney store, including one very puffy princess dress that Emma promised she would “totally never, ever wear.”  It was a spectacular day and as I drove home to the sounds of Emma snoring in the backseat, I thought to myself, again, I hope she remembers this.

We came home and justified our expenditures to Jared, and listened to Devin explain exactly how he’d gotten each and every welt on his body.  I was surprised when he concluded that he had, in fact, had a great time – without so much as a whimper about the need for more stringent safety regulations.

I ended the weekend watching Gilmore Girls with Adam and Jared and marveling at the fact that my feet were killing me but my eyes were still wide open.

It was a great weekend.

As I was pulling out my laptop this morning, I thought about how grateful I was to have spent the last two days with my family and with someone who more closely resembled me.

And 2 seconds later I started to wonder if maybe all of the darkness had passed.  I started to think that maybe the primary care doctor was right and the answer to all of my problems was simply to switch from one bottle to another.  The wheels began to spin, faster and faster, as I considered all of the ramifications of being fixed and better and LOOK MA!  NO MORE PROBLEMS! and THANK YOU FOR PLAYING, WE CAN GET BACK TO OUR LIVES NOW!

And then I considered the fact that maybe I should calm the fuck down.

I had a great weekend.  I have no idea what that means about the last several weeks or the days ahead.  I have to remember that I have had great weekends recentlly and then been blindsided by fatigue all over again and been angry all over again because NO! AM FIXED! WHAT THE HELL?!?!?

The only thing I know is that yesterday was good.

This morning feels good, too.

I’ll think about tomorrow when it gets here.