im0ftheuniverse's Journal

I plan on quitting my job today. I was hired September 2007. I didn't want the job then, but I needed health benefits and money. I thought it was a job that would simply buy me some time so that I could find a job better suited for my skills and interests.

The job was much more stressful than I was told it would be. I handled the stress very poorly. I suffered my first migraine while on the job. I also after a few more months experienced my first serious urge to hurt myself. After another couple of months I ended up in the hospital and have not been at my desk more than a few days since then. 

I have been recovering(?) slowly while trying new prescriptions. I have battled the disability company. I am tired and nothing has really shown me it is working.

In actuality, the years I felt I was "suffering" prior to the job, I never had as serious a feeling to hurt or kill myself as I did once I was on medications.

This is one of the reasons why I am giving up the meds. Another is that in a couple of weeks I will be running out of my new script anyways, and I would hate to go through cold-turkey withdrawal with no insurance and nowhere to turn for help. I'm at least being smart about giving up the meds in that I am stepping down gradually, reading about withdrawal symptoms of others like me, and in general what I might expect. I've experienced quite a bit of nausea and abdominal and muscle cramps, insomnia, itchiness and restlessness, and have been very easily agitated. I haven't even done a week on the lower dose, and I plan on doing two weeks of each lowered dosage until I am completely free.

Something I have thought about quite a bit this morning is researching alternative remedies. Some of these things I should have been doing all along, such as exercise, deep breathing and meditation, prayer, and at all of these, I have tried but not been able to sustain. I find the exercise especially difficult, not surprisingly in part due to my massive weight gain as a side effect of the remeron. Now that I am off of that one, I hope that things will get easier as I adapt new practices.

I think a lot about the exercise. It is challenging for me because I am very out of shape, I hate sweating, and I have no motivation. I have so much trouble getting out of bed but I think that is changing with the insomnia this week. I feel like moving, which is a very new feeling for me. Just a half hour ago, I had the motivation to do half the dishes! They're even dried and put away instead of sitting there, still taking up kitchen space. Yay noticeable accomplishments!

Back to my thoughts. 

I think back to every single time I've taken lamictal. It tastes frigging TERRIBLE. I had to swallow four of those damned pills. With all of my pills, I've been using alarms to remind me to take them. I figure if I can set an alarm, take the time to get my pills out, count out four of them, cringe through the task of swallowing them, occasionally choking on one or two of them and plowing forward to finish my pills, then I can apply this to something else.

I can set an alarm for new remedies. I can make myself take out my treadmill. I can make myself cringe through stretches and cramps and burning in my muscles, I can ignore the sweating that I hate so much, I can plow through, I can count the minutes I stay on the treadmill. I can do it.

I am giving up old habits and giving in to the truth.