3 Days
It’s been 3 days since I started my SSRI. The side effects, so far, have been minimal, but they’re not fun. I’ve had a migraine that I can’t shake. On top of that there’s occasional nausea. Nausea is probably one of the worst feelings you can have, for me anyway. I hate that maybe, maybe not feeling.
The SSRI is making me feel flat. The best way to describe how I feel is that it feels like I’m staring out through my own eyes and watching things go by. It’s really like watching myself go through the motions. It’s not out of body, because it’s not 3rd person. I don’t feel as sharp. How much of this is the constant headache verse the medication? I don’t know. I shouldn’t lie to myself it’s probably the medication. Everything feels slowed down for me, but going the same speed for everyone else.
Sonder would be the one word I could use in the context of where I feel like I’m the extra in my life and the things that are going on around me. There I am while things pass by.
Sonder - the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
The first two days were kind of weird. I felt hyper aware of things. It was like I was waiting for something to happen. Some big shift that may or may not come. It never did by the way.
It’s all very surreal to me. I need the headache to go away so I can start to really see what this is going to be like.
Thank you to everyone who has checked in and offered advice and shared their stories. It makes this journey a bit easier. To my wife: thank you for all of your support.