Pregnant Bliss

Yesterday as I was driving to work, at the ungodly hour of 7:45 a.m., I felt happier than I have felt in a long time. The world, despite it being a rather normal sunrise and plain morning, looked beautiful, like a veil had drawn back and it was so beautiful as to be painful. I realized I hadn’t felt like that since leaving Yoron Island in 1999, which means I’ve spent the last 7 years in a sort of haze, probably because I’ve moved multiple times, gotten married, had a child, gone through several jobs and spent most of my time in polluted cities. It’s hard to realize that I’ve been living a “half-life” for 7 years (Marti says I always see things as “half-full” (correction: I meant “half-empty” of course) so even my peace and enjoyment brings hard analyzation to the tune of, “Why haven’t I been peaceful before?”). On the other hand, at the time, I really didn’t care. I just felt happy. And suddenly I remembered driving to work on my motorcycle on Yoron and watching the sun burst over the sea in a glorious sunrise, and the beauty of it — it was more than I can explain. The cool wind on my face at 35 km an hour (the top highway speed there), the smell of the salt water, the colors of the sun as it came over a thin platform of clouds — I realized then that I was truly happy, at that moment. And yesterday, I felt it again.

This is why I can’t take Prozac.

Let me admit, after I had Ben, I sank into a deep depression, which was heightened by the climate here in Tucson. Unlike most people, who feel happy when the sun shines, constant sunlight makes me extremely depressed and irritable. I’m not sure why — some trick of genes, I guess — because Idaho is pretty sunny. Of course, I was depressed there, too. I loved being near the sea, because the fog softened the world for me and took away the harsh edges. I loved fog in the winter in Idaho, too. It would roll in and suddenly the earth would be beautiful and mysterious, and the muddy frozen fields were alive with possibility. For this reason I love Seattle and the Oregon coast in a way I could never love California — California is just too damned sunny. Yoron Island was also very bright, but it rained a lot. I loved the rain. So here I am in Tucson, surrounded by cheerful people who love the sunshine and warm weather, and I have to put heavy drapes and aluminum foil on half the windows (a friend of mine calls it “trailering up the place”) in order to get through the summers. If it were up to me, I would spend May - October in a dark bubble, trying to get out of the terrible sunlight.

I had no idea I would react this way until I actually moved here. And this sort of reverse seasonal depression, combined with post-partum depression, made me a pretty miserable human being for at least a year. I went to counseling, and my counselor, bless her, wanted me to try exercise and more natural means of improving my mood. It worked, at least enough to get by. And then, about a year after I stopped counseling, my doctor started berating me for the 20 pounds I never lost after having Ben. Surprise, surprise, I burst into tears in her office. I’ve always enjoyed exercising and been in pretty good shape, so it was doubly disheartening to be unable to take off that last 20 pounds or so, and then the doctor — well, she was a petite size 4 and heartless. Her response, to my shock, was to prescribe an anti-depressant, which I found even more insulting. Clearly she didn’t know what an ass she was being about the whole thing. I filled the prescription, went home, took one and then decided it was bullshit. The pills stood in the back of my medicine cabinet for 6 months.

Finally, the day came when I was tired of being depressed and I decided to go ahead and take the pills — this was sometime during Spring 2004, I guess — and I took them according to her prescription. After talking to a friend, I decided she had prescribed me an extremely high dosage, so I halved it, just to be sure, and called up my old counselor so she could help monitor me during this venture. Two weeks into it, I went to work and found I couldn’t stop shaking. I had dry mouth and drank over a gallon of water in five hours. I had to rush out of my class to use the bathroom. It was awful. I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack, my heart was racing so fast. I went home and decided to halve my dose again. The next day I couldn’t bring myself to take any dosage. I just couldn’t face that kind of reaction again. It felt like I was losing my mind.

Three days later, I woke up feeling irritable that it was so sunny, and, you know, the strange thing was, I was happy. I was so happy to be depressed again. I called Marti at work and said, “Babe, I’m mad at the world and hate the sun again today, and I feel so happy about it.” He laughed and told me to stop taking the pills, which I already had. I threw them away, accepting that I might have to live with depression for the rest of my life, but considering that anti-depressants caused me to lose interest in sex, to feel blah all day long, and finally, to have severe side effects, it seemed like a pretty fair deal.

It always seems to me that happines sneaks up on me. I slowly forget my sadness and irritability, and one day I wake up to the full realization that I am no longer sad. Yesterday was that day.

I know many people are on anti-depressants, and some truly cannot live without the balancing they provide. I think my problem is more personality — I seem more depressed than I actually am, because I can be grouchy and irritable and still be happy, deep down inside. I think that I learned to disguise my joy early on, and to hide it like a precious thing. But for me, those days when the world is so beautiful it makes my heart ache — those days are worth the down days in between. So they may only come once every seven years — but they come. And when they do, I am here to meet them.