Without a doubt, being on anti-anxiety meds is revealing to me exactly how much of my daily energy was devoted to panic and worry. While the degree to which I was to experience this relief was not expected, I expected something along these lines. However, it’s somewhat surprising that being suddenly without all of that noise in my head leaves me amazingly bored.
I sit down at my computer almost out of habit. I would normally do this as a kind of “veg out” activity to get my mind off of whatever I was freaking out about. But I sit down now, click few a few things and get incredibly restless because it just isn’t entertaining me. I find that I have an amazing amount of focus now, but I am just not focusing on anything in particular. The anxiety is gone but the ways that I typically deal with it remain.
It’s so early in the game to beat myself up about any of this, but I definitely see myself having to make some changes. My daily activities just don’t make sense anymore. On one hand, my anxieties were overwhelming me, but, on the other hand they were a stimuli. It’s probably safe to say that, at one time in my life, anxiety / depression was a motivator for me to do more positive things. My interests as a musician certainly stem from that. This is true for a lot of people, I’m sure. When I listen to Elliott Smith’s music I always wonder how he could possibly be able to write ONE song and exist in the mental state he was obviously in, let alone hundreds of songs. I know that he did it because you really feel like you don’t have a choice. You do whatever makes the pain go away– for better or worse. Elliott reached the end of that rope and so did I. Obviously, my anxiety / depression wasn’t driving me to suicide, but it became bigger than I could handle on my own.
I feel like I’m probably making a huge mistake by publicizing all of this. While I wouldn’t tell a co-worker I was taking psychiatric drugs, I don’t seem to have a problem publishing it on the internet. I want to keep a record, at least, of everything that’s going on and I’m not particularly ashamed of this process.
