This week has been exhausting.  I just slept four hours, and an hour later, I feel ready to return to bed.  Maybe you’re anemic, the hypochondriac in me suggests.  Maybe I am.  I should go to the doctor to find out, but here I am, with health insurance, still feeling like I should go without, that I’m making too much of it, that doctors don’t need to get involved, even as I catastrophize every ache and shiver.

Doctors would never need to get involved—in my ideal world.  I wouldn’t have to take this medication.  I’d be normal.  Instead, a freak is what I feel like most days.

Most days, I can’t believe I have a job, a boyfriend, a cat, friends.  It all seems miraculous, like it has nothing to do with me.  In fact, it feels like all this has happened in spite of me.

I mean, think about everything this site talks about: the depression, the medication and self-medication, the emotional phenomena.  Who would keep that person employed?  And yet, I work for the biggest company in the industry.  Every day, I arrive at my job, open up Outlook, and think, as I wait for the server to download the emails, Oh, God, I’m going to get yelled out. The fear has made me religious about updating and answering my work email.  I’m always waiting for it: the revelation.

They’ll email me into the office one day and finally say it: “this is unacceptable.”  I’ll hear, “you’re unacceptable,” thank them for the opportunity to work with them, and quietly leave the company forever.  At that point, I’ll probably go into a deep depression before being carted off to a mental hospital.

Every morning, between the click of a little, orange desktop icon and the message that all emails have been downloaded from the server, I see this future.

On the meds, all of that still happens; the difference is how I feel about that vision.  Instead of assuming I’ll thereafter be carted off to a mental institution, I tell myself, “if that happens, and I get fired, I’ll figure something out.  I’m not alone in this world.  I have Sam and my family and my friends to support me emotionally while I look for a job.  And there’s always a job to do, right?”

In better economic times, that last statement wouldn’t be a question, but I’m not afraid anymore.  There’s always money to be made, somewhere, somehow, if I’m not too proud.  And in the US, what with Section 8, things would have to get abject for me not to be able to earn enough for Section 8 housing.

Sadly, that’s how my brain thinks.  I cover every eventuality; I think of every possible outcome.  I’m constantly searching for logic.  Before the meds, my fears seemed logical, too.  Reason looked suspicious.  ”But what if…?  What if…?” was my refrain.  It still is.  Only, I don’t doubt the logic of the reasonable answers, anymore.

So, I’m cured, right?  I’m calm.  I’m listening to logic.  I’m reasonable, for all intents and purposes, and I’m technically, arguably functioning, to say I have a job and a relationship.

Yet, it’s not all right.  I know better.  I don’t trust any of this.  Even as the pills alleviate my anxiety, they don’t cancel out the thoughts, only the feelings attached to them.  While this is nevertheless an arsenal against negativity—while I can see reality that much clearer while on these drugs—I still think awful things.

But I don’t think it gets easier than this.  This is the point doctors always tell me meds can take me to.  The rest is therapy, they say.

I didn’t think they were right about meds, and I didn’t think they were right about therapy, but with my cultural perceptions of medication thrown into doubt, their promises suddenly become that much more probable.

Then again, I’ve also been known to be too trusting.

Round and round I go.  How do I stop?