Or at least the wolf spiders.
Kentucky has taught me to appreciate the giant monsters.
This evening, I spent close to an hour mowing my backyard, which, if you’ve SEEN my back yard, you would know that seems excessive for such a small space.The problem is, I haven’t been good about keeping up with it. This last month of coming off my antidepressants has been awful. It made me remember why it is I’m on them in the first place. I’ve been mean, irrational, occasionally paranoid, and a slew of other fun emotions. If I yelled at you, I’m sorry. If I cried uncontrollably in front of you, thank you for not running away–or thank you for understanding when I ran away.
If you have never dealt with a chemically imbalanced brain, it’s hard to describe the feeling of being absolutely out of control. My brain has been misfiring, pulling and pushing me in 30 directions all at once, all while a voice is yelling “you’re doing it wrong! You’re failing!” Every ounce of my strength was thrown full-force into my job, but of course with my brain not functioning properly, the mistakes have just been piling up. Again, with the neon sign flashing failure above my head. Or maybe in my head. It’s been an electrical storm of emotions, along with the deafening skepticism.
Thankfully, as of Monday, my blood pressure is back to normal–it turns out that the same medication that brought me mental stability was also trying to give me a heart attack. Honestly, after this last 2 week, I still think my mental health is more important. I would rather succumb to a heart attack than I would deal with my inner voice kicking my while I’m down.
Like the roller coaster you didn’t want to get on in the first place, you spent that entire time thinking this is awful! Make it stop! And when it’s over you vow to never do it again.I will never do that again.But back to the spiders!
In my state of meh, my lawn had become a wild jungle of almost knee-high grass. Perfect for wolf spiders–perfect for a tiny world full of insects, really. But, oh my gosh, every pass of the lawn mower, 5-15 spiders with bodies the size of quarters ran in panic! Save yourselves! She’s a functioning human being again and she’s catching up on life!!!
When we first moved to Kentucky, I remember sending a picture to my best friend (a Kentucky girl), and asking “what the heck is this!?!?” As a non-lover of spiders, Justin was called upon often in our first year–“there’s a spider in the bathroom staring at me! And I really have to pee! Please come kill it! And then he deployed and I was left to deal with them. I had to continually remind myself, they’re the good spiders. They’re the reason we have no black widows. They don’t mean to be terrifying. Now, I have a respect for them. They don’t mean to be giant, 8-legged creatures who prefer life in the tall grass of my backyard.
And now I’m sitting here realizing that my depression is a lot like the wolf spiders. I have spent my life hating it–why can’t my brain just function properly? But this is me. And I don’t mean to come in a mentally unstable package. But, at least I am back on the path to sanity.
