Deep Shit, Arkansas

Well, it doesn’t look like I’m coming off Zyprexa anytime soon. That wasn’t the focus of today’s appointment with Dr. A; in fact, we didn’t even really discuss it—I just asked and he said he was leaving things the way they are. I was sure he’d want to take me off the Z soon, or at least taper it down over a couple of weeks. But while this announcement surprised me, it’s almost a relief to know I’ll be on the med for awhile longer, for manic season is coming and Lord knows the late winter and early spring haven’t exactly been a picnic.

I’ve got to give the guy a lot of credit for showing up this morning. He’s got the upper-respiratory crud I had in February, and canceled all his appointments for yesterday and all but the morning ones for today. (He said he came in today because he knew I was on the books and he always looks forward to our sessions. LOL.) He looked so miserable that I didn’t even tease him about the newly sprouted facial hair around his jawline, although I was able to make him spit coffee across the room when I told him I was in Deep Shit, Arkansas.

Mostly, we talked about my job and the effects it’s having on my illness and general sense of well-being. For some reason he has a LOT more confidence in my abilities than I do—and he thinks I’m not doing well because I don’t like what I’m doing. Which is weird, because to me it feels like it’s the other way around, but considering the fact that he’s not the first or only person to propose that idea, I have to give it some credence. I do tend to self-sabotage (ooh, now there’s a shocker) and overthink things (really??), but I’ve been so nervous about my poor performance and the possibility of being let go that it’s turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Get rid of it,” he said of the anxiety. “Do the best you can, and maybe it’ll be good enough and maybe it won’t. What’s the worst thing that can happen? You lose the job and go on unemployment and get a chance to find out what your passion really is. It’s not that you can’t focus on learning the information you need to do your work—after all, you’re able to concentrate well enough most of the time to write your blog and your articles—but you’ve found out this is not what you want and you’ve put up barriers to learning it.”

Bull’s-eye!

Shit.

As much as I hate to admit it, he has a point there. Unless I’m in the middle of a manic episode, I can consistently produce decent writing, and even then I can usually put a post together, though it takes several hours of on-and-off work and comes out pretty tangential in the end. But that’s because writing IS my passion, and believe me, if I had the cojones to find a way to earn a steady paycheck for doing it, I’d have done it years ago.

In the meantime, I’m going to try to do as Dr. A suggested and push away the anxiety, give my VERY best, and let the chips fall where they may. What do I have to lose? Odd how I never thought of things that way…..but then, that’s what I (and the insurance company) pay him for.

I’m also going to try going six weeks between appointments. Two months is apparently still too long—I always seem to run into some sort of trouble when I schedule too far out—and monthly appointments aren’t really necessary anymore, since even my crises are less severe than they used to be, and we can always deal with them over the phone. Who knows, maybe if I stay on Zyprexa long enough I’ll get into a lasting remission and be able to go three months between appointments….wouldn’t that be grand?