Fountain
Day two of taking Sertraline. I've moved on from 'someone who has taken an antidepressant' to 'someone who takes antidepressants'. Side effects appear limited to mild stomach upset and a loss of appetite. Lost a couple of pounds since yesterday, but as I'm around 10lbs over my target weight, I'll take that as a positive benefit.
The received wisdom is that Sertraline, a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI), makes one feel worse before one feels better; it takes a couple of weeks to see benefits. So how do I feel now? I don't know whether I feel better, worse, or the same. Having some kind of diagnosis for my state of mind, to have a piece of paper signed by a medical professional saying that I am suffering from 'stress' gives me permission to feel ill, but also a responsibility to feel ill. Or so it seems. It's like a have a free pass to brood, a licence ot be absent-minded. But it also feels like I'm required to be those things, that cheerful high-functioning would be somehow dishonest, any laughter a betrayal of some contrived malingering.
I don't know how I should feel. I guess that sentence makes more sense without the 'should'. Or perhaps with 'should' replaced by 'will'. I know how I feel moment by moment, but I don't know how I will feel a moment from now.
My employer called me today. It showed on my phone as three missed calls. When I saw the notification on the screen of my S5, my heart started beating through my chest and I had the kind of cold sweat one thinks is a thriller writer's hyperbole. The message was to ask me to attend an appointment with an occupational health doctor, a benign request. My physical response to the act of being contacted was a fair indication of my fragile state of mind.
My wife asked me to get something from another room this morning. I started off on the errand and returned a few minutes later having not only failed to get the item, but not having even reached the room concerned, distracted by I now forget what.
In lieu of breakfast and lunch, I went for a run. I found myself in Pinner Village Gardens, a suburban park. I've run it a few times before, in the company of running club colleagues; this was the first time on my own. I happened an old concrete structure and stopped to read the plaque. It was revealed as an old, now non-functioning, water fountain, a gift from the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association. The top of the concrete structure, I guess where there used to be some kind of handle or spigot, was broken, revealing an interior filled with 21st century litter - empty crisp packets and crushed extra strong lager cans. A metaphor for our treatment of our community heritage? Perhaps. But I chose to see it as something more hopeful. Despite the litter, the structural integrity of the fountain was still intact. It was possible to imagine it being restored to working order. It would take only the will of a new group of community-minded people, or even of a single individual with determination and access to suitable resources.
I ran on, with renewed heart, and soon found myself at home.
