Leapfrog

Long before I knew firsthand the puppetry of psychotropic drugs, I knew of friends and clients that had leapfrogged from the prozac lilypad to zoloft moss and then landed with a splash on the waterlogged stump of wellbutrin.

All of us little froggies are trying to find the pad that suits us best, that doesn't sink under our weight or have any unwanted co-habitants.

My first drug was Lexapro, shiny and new (and expensive) with promises of bright, sunny days. And, except for the evening ripples that would rock my lilypad (also known as "brain shocks"), it delivered. That is, until the lilypad rent got too expensive, and I was forced to downgrade to a low-income lilypad in the form of generic Celexa, citalopram.

Time passed and I was still pretending to be living the high life on Lexapro, but it just wasn't the same. The water below my lilypad was always murky, and it felt as though the clouds never dispersed. My old depressed ways didn't return, but I felt like a zombie most days, unable to shake off the morning fuzziness. 

Nonetheless, the price was right (and my health insurance doesn't cover prescriptions), so I tried to make the best of it. Over the next year and a half, the pond scum started to accumulate, and I began to realize I needed to move. 

Here's a snippet from an email that I wrote to a close friend describing how I was feeling:  

I'm all over the place with my emotions the last few weeks. I'm tweaking my meds again (increasing them....) because I'm just not feeling motivated to do anything. The house is an absolute mess and I don't care. Its hard to find inspiration to blog on Tao of Twins anymore. My only joy is Jaeda and Tristyn. Lastnight I sat in their room after I put them to bed and told them about how Che' (my brother) and I used to do everything together when we were kids, and answered all their sweet, wide-eyed questions. I just wanted to crawl into bed with them and never leave, just hold them and kiss them forever.

I had replaced the emotional roller coaster of my initial postpartum depression with apathy.

Recently, I moved into in a middle-class Wellbutrin lilypad complex. I haven't met any of my froggie neighbors and have yet to find out if I fit in here. 

I worry that I won't ever find a lilypad that suits me. 


*Note - One day after I published this post, my family and I drove past this: