Day: 28

after four weeks:

the good--

thoughts of suicide have all but vanished--the interminable darkness has been virtually absent--initial side-effects have either disappeared or continue to lessen--I have an evenness of mood not known before--I am more outgoing, more extroverted, more talkative--the tone in my voice is kinder, without edge--interaction with others comes naturally, not forced--I read more--my thought processes tend toward solution, toward what matters in moving forward--emotional issues/energy concerning envy, jealousy, vanity, anger, resentment, retribution, sensitivity to personal attack have all been remarkably, although not completely, absent--appetite has been suppressed (I was eating too much before, so this particular side-effect has been welcomed)--thought leans heavily toward reason, logic, order, linear--ratiocination--I am less manipulated by external emotional energy--conflict is handled on a greater objective level than before--I have smiled more in the last month than in the previous year


the not so good--

the pleasure of music has not fully returned--creative thought is still somehow altered, which is to say lacking--it might be more accurate to say the cognitive process itself has been altered of which creativity is only a part--emotional highs have been blunted along with the blunting of emotional lows--emotion overall has been confined to a narrow middle ground--emotional intensity is missing as too emotive empathy, although empathy on a logical plane exists as before--I experience poetry differently than before and my desire to read and write it is less--thought within my own mind feels less lyrical, less melodic--the feeling is a sense of blandness, of neutrality, of detachment


overall observations--

so far, the good outweighs the not good--the changes I have experienced using Sertraline have allowed me to function in ways I could not function before--the meds are not a cure-all--effort on my part is as important in returning to health--the process is ongoing and relatively speaking, we are still early in the process--there have been bumps in the road and I expect that there will be more, which is to say life happens, as it does to all of us--I am encouraged, cautiously optimistic, and I am under no illusions that much work is still to be done--the overall feeling, as of today, which was not there one month ago is: I can get there from here--I have returned to the view of life as a garden--it must be watered, weeded, sunned--on a daily basis--I have seen a separation between passion and emotion, which is to say, although my emotional register has been rather limited, passion on a personal and professional level seems unaffected--I need to explore this issue/concept with more awareness--my grasp of what is happening on this level is vague--what is passion without emotion--is there a range of emotion that is operating that I am unfamiliar with--something, on a very subtle level, is operating, something just beyond my grasp to comprehend, similar to a word on the tip of the tongue, something you know you know but just can't put your finger on