Next Step In Healing

After I lost CJ, I knew that I was going to need help. I started very quickly to look for support.

I began Therapy and I truly could not live without it. I have been searching for group therapy but not successful to date. I have gone to mediums and tried to get in touch with my son. And from the beginning, almost from the very first, I have been taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication.

I had so many side effects from the drugs. Headaches - strong painful headaches. Stomach pain almost all the time. And a tremor that got so bad I started dropping things.

These side effects were nothing compared to the emotional changes. A deep numbness that made it so that I could not care about anything.

Even with all of this, I still grieved.

The drugs were not designed to stop the grief, but to help with the depression that would probably set in because of the grief.

In December, I decided I could not take it anymore. The side effects and the numbness were too much. I also realized, I had no idea who I was. I was on the drugs so quickly, I had no idea what I would really be like on the dark side of the moon.

You can't just stop anti-depressants. You need to slowly reduce the strength. The side effects increased again as I reduced the pills. The headaches were almost unbearable. The tremor increased again, and I added a new side effect - dizziness.

Today I took the last pill.

The side effects are subsiding but life is not easy. The numbness has worn off, and feeling has returned. You could call the feelings sadness but that does not give an accurate description at all of the feelings I now have.

A couple years ago I was dizzy all the time, and had to go to see a specialist. He asked me to describe what I was feeling and I told him I was dizzy. He said dizzy was not a feeling. I needed to be more specific. Was I light headed? Was I feeling like I was spinning? Or did I feel like the room was spinning?

That's how I feel about my sadness. It does not give a good enough description of how I feel. So I looked up synonyms for sadness. There are sooo many. Which is ironically sad itself. I could use any of the words to describe how I feel. But like with the word "dizzy" some of them are more right.

Melancholy, Sorrowful, Heart-Broken. I feel. And it hurts.

I am fighting depression and it is a daily struggle. I never realized how tiring such a struggle is. It takes energy that I don’t have a lot of. I understand that I can and will feel sad, for a long time maybe forever, but the depression is dangerous. I recognize that, and I am working on fighting it.

I don't want anyone to think that I think anti-depressants are not okay, or that those who are suffering depression should not take them. They were just not right for me.

I don't know if I will be able to continue this way or have to go back on some kind of drugs. I just know, I needed to go through this, I needed this struggle, and I needed to find myself again.

Myself without my son.