drugs

Yesterday I saw a psychiatrist. I almost didn't see the psychiatrist, for a series of rather convoluted reasons involving being told the appointment would be cancelled, getting a reminder text the day before telling me I had an appointment with the "locum physiotherapist", me calling to cancel said physiotherapy appointment and them telling me there was no doctor by the name on the record working there anyway, then getting a phone call at quarter past ten from a psychiatrist wondering where I was.

ME: Oh, God, I'm sorry, they told me you were a locum physiotherapist and no doctor by that name was working there and the letter said they'd cancelled it and...

HIM: Hmm. Can you come in now?

(Apparently psychiatrists aren't really interested in reasons.)

He asked me questions about my symptoms and I cried, because that's what I do at the moment. He asked me questions to screen for other mental health problems and I had some little fights with myself.

HIM: Do you ever hear voices?

ME: No.

BRAIN: Do I count as a voice?

ME: No.

BRAIN: Are you sure?

ME: Yes. 

BRAIN: Hey, I thought of a thing!

ME: Look, either help me interact with this human asking me deeply personal questions or shut up.

BRAIN: Fine, you're on your own. I'm going to watch him try to make facial expressions instead.

He was an interesting psychiatrist. He'd clearly heard of empathy, and had done a bit of training in it, but it wasn't a natural talent of his. He attempted a variety of faces, including "oh, that's awful", "I acknowledge and understand that this is upsetting for you", "oh, that's awful in a very different way", "hey, I worked out where you're from because you used the word 'gorge'" and "don't worry, everything will be alright", all of which he managed perfectly well with the bottom half of his face. 

He wanted to talk about drugs. He wasn't sure that he believed my side effects, but was happy to try me with something fancier. 

HIM: We keep this one up our sleeves for when the more common antidepressants don't work. The initial dose is 75mg...

ME: ...I was freaking out about going up to 30mg on the last one.

HIM: But we can go up to about 220.

ME: Oh, that's alright then. (?)

The thing is, I'm not really sure that I want drugs. Drugs have worked for me in the past when I've really wanted to be happy with the situation I'm in, and that's not the case right now. I'm not happy, and to kick my expectations and dreams far down enough to let me be happy in that dull-as-shit job with its complete lack of prospects, stimulation or genuine people would feel like failure, a commitment to mediocrity I'm not prepared to make. This isn't the place for me anymore, and I promised myself that this year would be the year I made difficult but correct decisions for my own happiness. It might come at the price of my financial security, but hey, I managed two months without a fucking home. 

Right now I feel displaced, like an outsider. I don't feel I have anywhere that's mine. I used to feel that my job (admittedly, not this job) was mine, that I had an attachment to the company. I used to have two groups of dance people that I felt were mine, but now one of them has almost completely dispersed and the other has moved on without me, to a place of rehearsing and performing and teaching and competing which is almost the exact opposite of what I want but makes me feel sad and left out nonetheless. I went to a dance last week after several months of not, an event I went to almost every month for two years, full of people I know and some I love, and I felt less at home than I did the first time I walked into a social, when there was not one familiar face in the room. You can't fix that with drugs. 

I haven't decided what to do yet. I'm wary of doing too much research into the drug itself because everything has all the side effects in the world, so I think it comes down to: am I willing to refuse a possible solution on the strength of a gut feeling?