Hortus Deliciarum

It’s been a slow news week. That is to say, a slow news week in my personal life. In the greater world, of course, stars seem to be dropping left and right, as do planes, which is beautifully reassuring for someone with a mild flying phobia who is on FOUR planes later this month…but I digress. I do have a lovely new laptop to play with, namely, a 13″ Macbook Pro, which has been here since yesterday and to which I am slowly adjusting. I’ve been anti-Mac all of my computing life but my sister loves hers so much and the pretty aluminum case is just so, well, pretty that I was won over. I’m glad to say that it is possible to install Windows on a Mac, if I find myself driven too crazy by the vagaries of Mac OS X, but aside from trying to figure out how to use Adblock in Firefox without a right-click button, and having to learn NOT to always have my left forefinger on the touchpad while my right finger is dragging (it makes things zoom in and out, woo, and can also make the cursor just not move at all), things are going okay. It’s certainly better than my experiences as a lab tech at our foreign languages computer lab in college would have predicted.

Anyway.

The real ups and downs have all been meds-related. I have to step back and remember that my body is adjusting to three new prescriptions at once (four if you count an upped dose of thyroid medications). What is causing the weird insomnia that keeps me from dropping into a deep sleep until 2 AM or so, but only does so intermittently? What is making me SLEEPY in the morning, again intermittently? It’s hard to say. What I can report in the positive news is that, whether it’s the Lexapro, the Vitamin D, or both, my overall mood is improving. I don’t feel so groggy and stupid all the time…and when my colleagues ask how I am, I can actually chirp back with some validity, “Great! How’s yours!” I’m sure part of it is the weather, as we (unlike my poor east coast friends) are enjoying a beautiful summer so far. Weirdly, even though I’m not sleeping as much, I actually have more energy. For me to be up and about at 6:30 without feeling like I’m going to just crawl back under a rock and die is strange.

Of course, the weird drugged-feeling sleepiness at work that would set in around 9:30 and not clear until mid-afternoon was a problem a couple of weeks ago but seems to be wearing off slowly, so one hopes it won’t come back and ruin things.

It’s odd. Good, but still odd. To feel happy again for most of the day is a remarkable gift…I’m a little frustrated, honestly, that I didn’t do this sooner. I have to attribute it to that weird inertia of depression. I know people describe depression as a dark monster but my depression is sneakier than that. It insinuates itself into my life like a strange, poisonous vine that, before I realize it, has wrapped itself around every organ and every thought until I can’t even recognize its toxicity. I can still function, still go to work, still go about my daily life but the vine sucks out the joy in little rootlets that get twined through my brain and dig deep.

Having a little bit of joy back is good. Having some confidence in myself back is good!

The other oddity is that the Metformin (I assume) is kicking my hunger signals and cravings where it hurts. I know…ten years ago I’d have been embracing that wholeheartedly but I’m skeptical. Is it that my body has been fooling me all this time or has insulin resistance truly been that much of an issue and I’ve just never realized it, never seen that there might be more to my eating than just my being greedy? Yesterday evening, at dinner, I had a hot dog. I was still a little hungry and they were tasting good, so I contemplated having a second one…only I looked at the second one and thought, “No. Can’t eat the whole thing or I’ll feel sick. Half will do me nicely and without the bun.”

And half was all I had.

This is like some kind of bizarro world. I’m not sure anyone who is a “normal” eater (how many of those ARE there in America today, anyway, given all our crazy dieting mentality?) can understand this but I am not good at hunger signals. That is to say, I generally know when I’m hungry (although the Met is making that a little problematic too) but NOT eating past full, even if it’s not eating to uncomfortable fullness, is a hard thing. I clean my plate. My deepest instincts are that if there’s food there on the plate, I need to finish it. Trusting my body to tell me when it’s had enough is not something I do well. I discussed that with my nutritionist this week, actually, and we agreed that I should start thinking about fullness. Not attributing any value to it but just checking in with my body when I feel the desire to eat, so that I know where on the hunger scale I am. Noticing without moral value.

That’s hard for me. I have to work very, very hard indeed for it not to become diet-triggering but I’m doing my best.

The Met, though…I can’t figure it out. The fact that I don’t recognize my hunger as well when I’m on it is scary to me, because it reminds me so much of my one experience with diet pills. They stopped working after a while and I’m having a hard time trusting that this is part of my body and not just a screwy side effect. I guess we’ll just see. In the meantime, it truly is a nice feeling to recognize when something is too much. I do hope that, at least, continues.