Here at shiz.ca, I tend to not conceal my experiences with depression nor the fact that I am taking drugs for my condition. I take Celexa. Citalopram. I take it every day. I have been on it close to 5 years now. Five years of meds, the retail cost of which probably could cover the cost of a new Apple G5 computer. And here's to the medical insurance that covered most of that.
D & I spent the weekend dog- and house-sitting for friends, in a burb about an hour from us where D used to live when we were dating, and our friends loaned us a car to get around. So like a smart girl, I forgot my drugs at home and Friday night in bed I went, "Oh Shhhhhhhhhiiiiiit."
I decided I would drive home Saturday morning and get them; I'd be taking my anti-depressant late but not too late so I'd be just fine. So on the way I stopped at IKEA to get drinking glasses because we'd broken many--and hey, why not have them all match if we can?--and I went in, shopped, bought coffee, and took my shopping cart to the room-sized elevators down to the lower parking.
I left IKEA. And I went blank. Totally blank. I knew I had not parked far from the same exit doors I was walking out of; I'd intentionally gone in the back doors by the checkouts. I knew I wanted a silver KIA with a green decal on the window. And I was utterly and totally blank like I have never been before in my life. Was I to the left? Possibly. I didn't know. Was I to the right? Well, maybe, it didn't seem right but nothing seemed right. Was I straght ahead? Behind me? That didn't seem right. In fact, none of it seemed right. I looked. I walked in one direction, hoping to jog my memory. And I felt very lost. And I felt confused. And I thought, no it can't be this way, this doesn't feel right, so I walked the other way and the same thing happened and so on and so on and so on.
You know how sometimes you draw a blank but then, after a moment it comes to you? I waited and paced, but it still didn't come to me.
I was dumbfounded. And every time I hit the teeniest bump my coffee would sloosh out over my hand, face, cart, whatever (The coffee, it was posessed. I am certain). It really seemed like the memory of parking and walking into the store had been erased. There was nothing there.
And I was not finding the car. And I felt frustrated and sick and confused. But I also felt totally sane, coherent, sharp, even. But not. I would point the clicker in one direction and hit "unlock" and look to see if any cars responded with flashing lights. Then another direction. Nothing.
Then I tried to backtrack to the entrance I'd driven in. I remembered which enterance I'd taken to get into the lot, but now it didn't seem to be there any more. So I went to the next entrance, and by now I'm out of the parkade cover and it's misty out and I'm getting wet in the rain. And still I cannot remember. I can't remember anything. I was sure that wasn't the way I'd come in, so I backtracked again, and finally, finally found the entrance where I'd driven in. A few meters in I would have had to have turned left or right. Which way had I turned? Had I turned left there? Or right? Total. Blank.
This is now a 20 to 30 minute blank. I cannot find the car. And what's more, I cannot find any memory of anything between turning off the road and arriving upstairs in IKEA. That was the most troubling part of it all. I was fairly certain I hadn't parked very far from the exit doors which is what made it even more confusing, because I'd narrowed down their HUGE parking lot to what was basically a half-block radius and even THEN I could not find the car.
I wandered one way from the left/right turn I *may* have taken and saw nothing familiar, no silver KIA, turned another way and saw nothing, turned another way and - then - I thought I might be looking at it. So I clicked "unlock" and the headlights flashed. It was the car. I was parked directly in front of the IKEA exit, SIX. SPACES. from the entrance. THIRTY. MINUTES. after I began to look for it.
Hold me.
Seeing it did not jog my memory. It was a very odd experience. The experience could have been caused by any number of things like age or tiredness or a brief metal lapse but my gut says it was missing my meds that did it. Because I felt so odd. So weird. But totally normal, too. And about an hour after I took my pills that feeling went away.
When I first started taking Celexa I forgot to take them more frequently, and the result was either that I felt no different or I'd cry if my day went a certain way. I've never had such an odd reaction to my drug or to *not* taking my drug. And it's coming on 5 years now that I've been taking it. What is this drug doing to me that when I miss a single dose I become so weird? It was one of the most confounding experiences of my life.
So, I might look into ... other options. Other ... eventualities. Because jeez.
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