Northward Midget

Tag: raw

  • From Parnate to Nardil

    Last week my doctor switched me from Parnate (tranylcypromine) to Nardil (phenelzine).

     

    At least it’s easier to spell.

    Yesterday at work my friends kept asking if I was high.  I was very tired, maybe slightly euphoric in that tired kind of way.  Not a particularly pleasant high, unless all I had to do was sit in the sun.  Not if I had to correct the code of others in the middle of a deploy.

    After work, I had a date at the pub up the hill.  I don’t know how it went.  It seemed fine to me.  I don’t think I did or said anything particularly offensive, as I am wont to do.   I like her, she’s attractive, was fun to talk and be with.  It was a good time, and then it ended.

    Eh, it was a Monday night.  Whaddya gonna do.

    Nardil isn’t making me any happier.  On the contrary, I feel somewhat worse than when I was on a steady flow of the former MAOI.

    I’ve got to admit a gross violation of the suggested dietary restrictions for MAOI and any other anti-depressant.

    I consume alcohol daily.  Sometimes not a lot, just a beer or two.  Sometimes an awful lot (a bottle of wine or a bottle of whiskey apportioned in overpriced servings), sometimes nothing at all.  But I do it, and I know I’m not supposed to, but fuck that.

    It’s the only thing that makes me feel “good” at the moment.

    So, I’m not giving that up.  It isn’t going to happen.  Same with smoking, although that doesn’t affect the anti-depressants.

    Maybe Nardil is less tolerant of alcohol than Parnate.  I’ve read bad things about most of its “hydrazine” class being recalled due to hepatoxicity.

    In any case.

    Sometimes.

    I realize, where I’ve landed.

    And, although I say I am happier than I ever was when married, and in a sense, I really am, when compared to the loveless marriage of the past few years, and others think so, too.

    Sometimes.

    I wonder.

    Where is my beautiful wife?  Where are my beautiful girls?  Why am I all alone?

    Why am I fucking crying?

     

     

  • Suddenly

    I feel that this has given me the most incredible and wonderful thing that I have ever been given, and also, the worst. […] I’ve had my whole soul undermined by it — on the one hand. On the other hand, in one sense, my experience has been about finding joy.

    It was Memorial Day weekend. The day before, maybe. End of May. Sunday? She was taking the kids to visit with her parents in Rochester. As they went outside and she was about to leave, she turned to me.

    I was sitting on the loveseat (ha), sipping a cup of coffee, facing her and the door.

    I knew that look.  It meant she was pissed off about something, and I probably did not have any idea what that something was or why it made her so angry.

    This time, the something was a Facebook post: a link to a write-up on a role-playing session.  The tragic opening sequence contained characters she felt were too similar to our family.  I’ll skip the details, except to say that some of her … friends had told her that the story was grounds enough to get a restraining order against me.  She seemed more angry and embarrassed than concerned or afraid for herself and the children, and she left that way.

    Maybe an hour later, I get a message on my phone.  She’s not coming back until I’m out of the house.

    “OK.”

    I stayed at hotels most of that week.  I didn’t see the kids.  I frantically searched for an apartment while trying to work out a budget that would allow for us to maintain two households under my single salary.  There wasn’t time for me to feel much (if indeed I ever “feel” anything) except frustration and a kind of passive, harmless anger.

    It’s a month later.  I’ve got my little one-bedroom in the basement of a building in a park.  It’s nice.  Heat included.  I mostly eat tuna sandwiches and cereal, maybe pizza on Friday.  I’ve got Internet, and a great “open box” special of a deal on a big-ass TV from Best Buy.

    I’ve moved a couch, a California king-size bed, a dresser, a desk, a table, all by myself in my trusty old Forester.  I’m very proud of that.  It wasn’t easy, especially that goddamned $25 thrift-store couch.

    I saw the girls a few times while moving things after that first week.  Now I go over after work every Wednesday to spend time with them and put them to bed and whisper “I will always love you” to each of them until they get sick of it or fall asleep.

    They seem to be taking everything remarkably well.  Is that a credit to how they were raised?  Their natural temperament?  Do they truly realize daddy isn’t coming back to stay?

    God damn you.

    Fourteen years together.  Two kids.  Two years ago, she decides she isn’t happy.  Fuck it.  She has her reasons.  I won’t go into them, because quite frankly, I don’t fucking understand most of them.  Part of the problem?

    It makes me angry.  Sometimes, like just there.  However, surprisingly, most of the time, I am happier than I have been in years.

    No more dreading going “home” to a wife who despises me.  Ah, she may beg to differ.  Well, her behaviour, her detachment, the complete lack of any affection over the past years — that’s been a worse hell than anyone who hated me has ever put me through.

    I’m sure she suffered.  Poor thing.

    Fuck you.  This is my fucking blog, and it’s fucking about me.

    She thought I was a danger to the children!  My children. What’s the worst thing you can say to any parent?  That he’s a bad parent.  That he’s hurting his kids.  That he would ever hurt his kids.

    By all accounts, I should be angry, or hurt, or something.  Profane outbursts aside, I’m really not.  I’m content.

    I’ve also learned that I am not what she said I was.  I’m charming, considerate, intelligent, witty, and maybe even reasonably attractive for someone my age.  I add that last part just because it’s important with regards to finding someone else after being with the same woman for the best goddamned years of your life and expecting to be with her forever.

    Through sickness and in health, til death do us part.

    Was I ever depressed?  You know, she’s the one who prompted me to start treatment.  Treatment that has never worked.  Hell, maybe years of anti-depressants have made me worse.

    This was supposed to be a celebratory post.

    I’m as close to “happy” as I’ve been in years.

    I wish her the best of luck as a single mother, but when the kids are no longer kids, well, I don’t like to end on a down note. Here’s a song.

    Turn around.

    Every now and then,
    I get a little bit lonely,
    and you’re never comin’ ’round.

    Turn around, bright eyes.

    Every now and then,
    I fall apart.

    And I need you more tonight.
    And I need you more than ever.
    And you’ll only be making it right.

    We’ll be holding on — forever!

    That’s a joke. She’ll get it, but she won’t be laughing.

  • Another Torrent Of Words

    Every night I come home with the faint and irrational hope that something will be different, better, changed, fixed.  Where did I go so goddamned wrong?  How did it get to this point?

    This isn’t worthy of an entry.  I’m just talking to myself.  The blog has been delinked from my fazigu.org homepage.  Only visitors to tijuanabibles.org seemed to have found their way here.

    I talked to her about the situation tonight.  I don’t know why.  I know all there is to know.  There’s still that faint hope that she’ll make a complete turnaround and love me again.

    If you’re reading this, you probably know me, and I’m sorry to break it to you this way, but my marriage isn’t doing so well.

    She tells me other families are better.  They have problems and the spouses work together to solve them.  In our family, I dismiss them.  That’s true as far as things like the crack in the wall in the girl’s room goes, or even chipped paint, or a cracked flue, or ants, or a leaking skylight.  Maybe I am willfully oblivious to all these problems with the house.  We’re just renting.  What can I do?  It’s an awesome neighborhood, and most of  these things are cosmetic problems.  I don’t mind cosmetic problems.

    But she does, and I don’t sympathize, at least.

    My shrink tells me I try too hard to see the other side of things, to see her side of things.  I think she (my shrink) is giving me too much credit.  I wish she’d be harder on me.  I must be a pretty goddamned awful person, else I wouldn’t be in this situation, right?

    I checked in on OKCupid.com and my wife had sent me a message.  It just said “woo” or something, but it was sweet.  It was from 2008.

    I found an old birthday card in the car.  It was “from” our eldest, when she was way too young to even scrawl her name.  My wife had written the salutation with a little smiley.  The card said “World’s Best Daddy.”

    How did it get so bad?

    Was I really oblivious to everything that led to this?  She tells me how she told me she was close to wanting a divorce two summers ago.  One summer ago, she’d brought up seeing other people.  Maybe I was oblivious.  I certainly didn’t make the changes she wanted to see.  Am I even capable of making those changes?  Do I know what to do?  Am I capable of being a husband at all?  A father?

    Do you know me?  I’m sorry things are like this.  I wish I could go back in time, but to when?  Last year?  Before we had kids?  Before we were married?  I’m clueless now how to fix things, assuming anything can still be fixed.  It’s all broken into jagged little pieces.

    I don’t want to go to bed and lie awake for hours.  I’ve been getting pretty good at blocking out my situation.  That is, I stop thinking about the problems around me, the future, the consequences, what might happen, what lies ahead when I come home to an emotionally empty house.  If I didn’t do it, I’d be suicidal 24/7.  It takes a lot of energy to block out the hell of life.  No, this isn’t me being angsty.  It’s hell.  I’m consigned to hell.

    Maybe someone on the outside could help me out.  Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.  Someone tell me it’s not as bad as it seems.  Someone tell me how to dig myself out of this situation.  Tell me if it’s just time to give up, throw away the marriage.  No, sorry, the marriage is already done.  We’re finished.  She’s said as much.  She tells me she doesn’t hate me, but she resents me.

    I’m writing this for myself, but I’m hoping, maybe, maybe someone will read it, stumble across it, someone who isn’t a bot spamming for Canadian pharmacy sites, maybe someone will read it and know what to do.  We all hope someone will rescue us, don’t we?  Or sympathize.  Or something.

    The medication must help, because my stomach isn’t in knots right now, and I haven’t even been drinking.  It’s keeping me from killing myself.

    Is that a good thing?

    I don’t have anyone to talk to.  My therapist, yes, but she thinks we should just separate.  We can’t.  It isn’t financially possible.  She applauds me for just getting through each day in this situation.  She’s 100% on my side, and that makes me wary.  I want criticism.  I want someone to tell me I’m wrong and tell me how to fix those wrongs.

    I feel as if I’m wrong for not mentioning the kids more, that they should be the bright spot in my life, the thing that keeps me going.  I do love them, and I do, well, what can I say?  I want to get better for them, but my shrink is telling me to do more things for myself, to try to find things that make me happy.  That’s all I’m getting.  How do I enjoy life?  Is that really it?  Do I just need to enjoy life?

    I’m dead inside.  I’m a zombie.  I’m shuffling through the wasteland of existence.  Not even a zombie.  At least they want brains.  They know they want brains and they go after them.  What do I want?

    Almost a thousand words and what have I accomplished?  Have I opened up any doors in my head?  Have I figured anything out, sussed out any of my issues through this writing therapy?  I don’t think so.  How many times have I written “I” tonight?  Well, it is all about me.

    I’m going to smoke and go to bed.  Tomorrow morning I’ll pick up donuts and try to forget the problems, try to make it through the day until the work week starts again.  How long can this go on?  How long should this go on?  This isn’t any way to live.