The trenches, in this case, being the metaphorical ones in which the two sides huddle and trade cigarettes for porn in the World War II inside my mind.

That would make happy, healthy me the Allies, and my depression Hitler.

Though honestly, it get really hard to tell one side from another and all you really care about is getting some peace and quiet for a while.

Right, wrong, who is winning, who loses, where the whole thing is going… fuck it.

Sooner or later, battle fatigue makes cowards of us all, and a mockery of ethics.

War never changes.

I know everyone is sick of the way this blog is going lately, and so I decided that today I would try something different and talk about my psychological issues in depth and with special attention to tiny details.

I know, I know…. and you are welcome.

At least today, I have an excuse : I saw my therapist this morning. Originally, I was planning to make my own way back via the miracle that is the public transit system because Joe was going to need all his time to sleep, but he ended up taking a day off work, so that ended up not being necessary.

Secretly, I am glad. Making my own way home on the bus would have been an adventure, and probably pretty good experience in boundary stretching, but I am nowhere near strong of character enough to do that when it can be avoided.

“No, Joe, I said I was going to make my own way home, and by golly, I will!”

Yeah. That does not sound like me.

Anyhow, it was a decent session with my therapist. I reported in to him on how the reduction in my Paxil from 80 mg a day to 60 mg a day was going. So far, no major fireworks, either good or bad. I have been experiencing mild dizziness, nothing too bad, just the occasional wobbly feeling when I move my head too fast or stand up too quickly. Give how often other factors like blood sugar irregularities or sinus issues make me dizzy, it barely register on my radar at all.

The impact is felt more strongly in my emotional tone. I definitely have felt kind of like a little black cloud has been following me around lately. I have had attacks of depression and attacks of frustration, as well as a few periods where I felt pretty good, actually.

Overall, I simply feel emotional. The intensity of my emotions is heightened, and so the highs are higher and the lows are lower.

For us science types, the amplitude of my mood has increased but not its frequency.

If that makes any sense.

It’s not too bad, really. One grows very tired of being numb after a while, and so at least at first, you are just happy to be feeling things again.

It’s like that warm, kinda good, kinda ticklish feeling you get when your foot is just starting to wake up from being asleep. It is not entirely a good feeling by itself, but it beats that terrible coldness hands down.

That is how I feel inside now. 80 mg is a simply ridiculous dosage, 20 mg over the maximum dosage listed in all the pharmaceutical references. It was crazy of my GP to put me on that high a dose in the first place. Hence, my instant agreement when my therapist suggesting stepping down the dose.

If this dosage works out, my therapist will take me down to fifty. Fine by me. There was a time when I needed a heavy dose of emotional anesthetic. I was in very bad shape and no therapy would have been possible with me in that state.

But now, I feel like the medication is slowing down my recovery. Getting out of my hole is going to require feeling a lot of things that I have been suppressing for many years, and something that keeps that from happening or makes it happen far too slowly is worse than useless, it’s a negative.

I would never drop the medication completely, all at once. I know enough pharmacology to know what a horrible disaster that would be, and even if I didn’t, my buddy Joe tried that and crashed into deep depression about a month later.

So I know it’s dumb from that.

But turning it down slowly over time is a good thing.

I feel the good stuff so much more. That makes feeling the bad stuff more worth it, to me.

Maybe now, I can feel love.