A Strange Absence

This past Thursday was quite something else. It had rained heavily all night and was still raining when I went for my morning walk. It was also 36 degrees F and due to the extensive rain, there were puddles (ie, rushing streams of water) where there normally aren't. Which meant that I stepped in all the puddles. Every time I started to get sensation back in my feet, I stepped in another cold, deep puddle. (It doesn't help that it's dark; but I can see enough to see most of the puddles. It's just when they cross the entire street you don't have much choice.)

Then when I drove to work, still in the dark, (6:15-6:30 am), three fairly critical traffic lights had no power. The only way I got across the 7 lane road was because people stopped for me. And there weren't that many people on the road at that hour--I wasn't expecting such difficulty. But the third light was a three-way road. I was going straight in the right lane. Two lanes from the joining road turn left into that lane and the one next to me. I thought the people ahead of me had been going through the intersection so I followed, unable to see the gray giant pickup truck making a left turn, due to the angle he was at (I couldn't see headlights or taillights so he vanished into the rain). Although we didn't collide or even have to swerve (he just bent his turn sharper so as to turn into the left lane rather than the lane I was in) I was immensely surprised he didn't beep at me. 

Once I was at work I was informed that there was a critical sample we had to run dissolution and assay on. But it was not even being coated yet and they were having trouble finding the raw materials. But we'd have to stay no matter how long it took. This kind of uncertainty sets me into a near panic. But I was at work and had to remain calm, or at least not go into total meltdown.

Which led me to snap at a coworker who doesn't speak much English and has appeared to give up trying to learn any more of it. He consistently makes life difficult for himself, work-wise, and that has a ripple effect making life difficult for his coworkers. And he does this because he will NOT tell you if he doesn't understand your explanation. I think it's cultural but it's irritating and it's been going on for several years and I rather lost it. It wasn't the worst "lost it"--I wasn't screaming at him or anything, but I felt really bad about it.

We come to the reason for this post. My cousin C-- who is a brain trauma nurse said I should write it down while it was still fresh (it's Sunday as I write this; oops). 

I was in the write-up room, checking a notebook. Coworker A-- was beside me, searching through the stability sample box for her samples for the day. Coworker J-- came in and saw the room was full. This is a tiny room. There is only space for two people side by side in chairs to write up, and the width of the space between counters is the same width as the door. So J-- had to turn sideways to get past the back of my chair and reach past me, quite close, practically leaning over me to grab the one folder he needed to check. 

This is normal. I'm used to it. But I'm always hyper aware of everyone around me lest they accidentally come in contact with me. I hate human contact, physically. Even brushing against my shoulder clothing-to-clothing makes me shudder and have to physically wipe the feeling away with my hand (which I make myself wait until the offending other human is out of sight range so I'm not too awfully insulting). 

J-- takes the folder and leaves the room (he's mildly claustrophobic with a lot of people in a small space--I don't know if there's a term for it because it's not the small space; it's small spaces with people in them). Obviously he's planning not to have the folder for long. He's a considerate guy and has worked here long enough to know other people will need the folder.

In fact I did; the next folder I came to was supposed to be that one. So I skipped over it and checked the rest of the notebook. I was a little surprised that he hadn't brought the folder back yet. I went to look for him to ask if he was done with it yet, figuring maybe he'd gotten side-tracked by a supervisor (they do that sort of thing).

When I found him (and it took a few minutes), he said he'd put it back. I said, oh, I guess we must have crossed paths then--you put it back while I was out here looking for you.

He gave me a puzzled look and said, no, you were there. 

My world just kind of stuttered to a halt for a second. Huh? I was? 

I asked him if he was sure, which got me another puzzled look and a confirmation. He kind of joked about it, said he must have been being really sneaky. 

I was still stunned. I have no memory of that. He came in, that close to me, putting a folder back, his arm reaching past me, leaning over my shoulder practically, and I don't remember???? There's no vague memory triggered by his words. Nothing. It's a blank space. 

There is no way I was so absorbed in what I was doing that I would fail to notice. Checking just isn't that hard, or that engaging. 

The way I see it, there's three possibilities. One: J-- and I have worked together in the same lab as coworkers for over ten years. He's always been very respectful of my "no touching" rule and has even gone out of his way to make sure he doesn't accidentally come into contact with me. Perhaps I simply was unaware that I trusted him enough not to have his presence consciously register with me.  

Two: The sensory stress of the day had me so overwhelmed that I didn't have brain space left to process his return (which was, admittedly, something I expected to happen).

Three: I had an absence seizure.

I'm really hoping it's one of the first two possibilities. But I have a cousin's daughter and an aunt, both on the same side of my family, with absence seizures. So I'm trying to gather data but as it turns out, it's hard to determine if you're having absence seizures when you live alone with pesty cats. (Animals can sense oncoming seizures and interrupt them.) And likely I'm only having them under stress, which would be only at work. 

There are tests but the main one involves being in the hospital for three days with electrodes attached to your head while they try to provoke a seizure. They'd probably get a meltdown instead. There's no way I'm subjecting myself to that kind of test. I don't know for sure but I'm betting it would take at least a week of staying home alone to recover and I don't have that kind of vacation time available to me. 

I think I'm at an impasse but I'm planning to go to my doctor anyway. And frustrate her by refusing to take the test ... 

Why I Don't Want to Live Forever

When I was younger, I wanted to be immortal. I watched Highlander (the movies and the series) and read about vampires and other immortal creatures. I never understood why they were either tormented and sad all the time, or really really nasty. I thought it was just because you needed bad guys for the plot and happy immortals didn't really lend itself well to a good plot either.

Going off on a tangent: when I was 9 I got a cat. His name was Pizza (silly name, but I didn't come up with it). I loved him very much. He was with me all through my teenage years (which were extremely hard and difficult for me, emotionally). He was a steady rock; his love was always there, always abiding. Of everyone in my life, I could always count on him to approve of me, to love me, to enjoy being around me and with me.

When he passed away, it felt like a hole was ripped in my heart, and all the love I felt for him was hemorrhaging out the hole, no longer reciprocated. It took five years for me to "recover" from the grief. But I had my parents, as I was still living with them. And I had Pippin.

Pippin was a Maine Coon I got because of all the cats I read about, Maine Coons matched Pizza's caring personality the best. I didn't really mean to get Pippin so soon after Pizza died. I was simply visiting breeders to have an idea who to choose. And Pippin chose me.

Pippin was different than Pizza. He was just as loving, just as caring, but he had health problems (it was a bad breeder I got him from) and I took care of him just as much as he took care of me. Our relationship was deeper, more nuanced. Pippin was, quite honestly, my best friend. He helped me with my anxiety and depression and enabled me to function with a fair amount of ease in the "real world." And I did the same for him.

With him by my side, I even felt strong enough (emotionally) to move out into a house of my own.

That meant that when he passed away, it hurt even worse. The hole was bigger this time ... I hadn't known that was possible. Compounding the issue was I had no one. I was completely alone for the first time in my life and I surprised myself by hating it with a passion. While my human friends and family tried to "be there" for me, it wasn't the same. They had their lives and their own concerns and I felt guilty inflicting my grief on them, especially when it didn't get better.

So I turned it inward against myself. Four years and I am still hemorrhaging. Four years and I have new friends--Colby and Apricot and Thimble. Three lovely cats who care for me and love me and help with my anxiety. And I am still hemorrhaging. I'm barely hanging on emotionally. The least disturbance to my routines, my friendships with humans, and I fall apart.

Yet I cannot cry. I rarely smile, much less laugh. I'm isolating myself and I know it's not healthy but losing Pippin hurt so much I don't want to love anyone else that deeply ...

But I do. It's what I do. I'm capable of deep love and I need it. I need the connections. I need the stability love brings. I love my boys, my CAT. I love my parents, my siblings. I love my friends (well, some of them!)

I knew Pippin fourteen years, and the same for Pizza. I've known my parents all my life. How much deeper will my grief be when they pass away? And I'm the youngest of my siblings. If life goes the way it should, they will pass away before I do. I will experience the grief for all of them.

Who wants to live forever? I certainly don't.

When you have lived long enough

and have lost enough of those you love so dearly

that there are more holes in your heart than heart,

You will understand that death is not a foe to be fought,

but instead a friend

to be welcomed in the fullness of time

who will fold you in gentle darkness

and in that last moment

you will know peace. 

The Old Me

Yesterday Facebook threw up a post in my face that came from my past. March 2013. It was about eating chocolate chip cookies from the Publix bakery.

Thanks Facebook. As if I needed a reminder of a time when I only had two diagnosed anxiety disorders and not five. The time before Pippin died. A time when I could eat four chocolate chip cookies on the way home from the bakery without worrying about how many calories was in them.

It's bad enough that I suspect half my friends want the old me back. I want the old me back, too. I've waited a long time for her to come back.

But I don't think she ever will. This is my reality now, and I have to accept it. Pippin is never coming back. I have CAT now: Colby Apricot and Thimble. I do have an eating disorder which I have to manage carefully.

And I am different. My personality has changed, and I'm just going to have to get used to that. I have different routines now.

Maybe part of it is just growing up, too. I have better emotional regulation now. That sounds better than saying I only have surface emotions anymore, and that inside I just feel numb all the time. Right?

In some ways, though, I like myself better now. I never really liked being a drama queen. Even when I was in the throes of emotions there was a part of me that would have really preferred not to be. I like the new calmer me. Even if I feel mostly just numb.

I do wish my sensory processing disorder hadn't gotten worse, though. It's hard enough to be around people, without having everything be too-loud-too-bright-too-smelly. I mean, it was before, but now it's worse. I mean really. Perfume serves absolutely no purpose, and it just makes you stinky. It baffles me why people wear it.

I had previously learned how to cope with a certain level of sensory assault. Now that it's worse, some of my coping mechanisms aren't sufficient anymore. And it's taking me a while to learn new ones. It's exhausting.

Eating Disorder One-Year Update

I'll start with a summary in case you haven't been following my journey.


At the end of November 2015, I began to suspect I had an eating disorder. I even knew what type, I thought. Binge eating disorder. This is where you eat large amounts of food, beyond the point where you're full, beyond the point where you want any more, and in fact you keep stuffing food into your mouth whether you want it or not.

The loss of personal control is very alarming, and I begin to think I might need to do something about it. But it was only the one time, right?

It happened three more times before the end of December and at that point I thought I really needed to do something.

About that time I came across an app, which allowed you to record your food with great ease, including recipes you made yourself. So being the scientist that I am, I decided to gather data before I made a decision.

After two weeks of gathering data, I realized several things. First, I didn't have binge eating disorder. I had binge/starve eating disorder. And the starving part, all unbeknownst to me, was actually what was triggering the bingeing.

Yes, that's right, I didn't even realize I was starving myself. I thought this was a normal amount of food for someone my size to be eating. I was eating about half of what I should be eating. It's no wonder that I started bingeing. My body was desperate for food.

The other thing I realized, was that I was eating a quarter of the protein that I should. Part of this was due to the fact that I am allergic to chicken, and part of it's due to the fact that meat protein is expensive.

Now that I had data, I needed to do something about it. It was obvious (to me, anyway) that what I needed to do was even out my calories, so that I was eating the same amount each day. This would prevent me from starving or bingeing.

I looked up on the web in multiple places how much I should be eating. Turns out there are two different calculations, but they both came out to about the same amount. I didn't believe either one.

So I set my base calories in the app to 1200. Which is about 300 more than I had been eating on a regular day. This was at the end of January 2016.

Over the next few months, I increase my protein intake. I also had to keep increasing my base calories. Mostly because I kept losing weight. I know that at this point many people would have loved to be in my position, but the fact is, I had lost so much weight that I was getting into the danger zone. I seriously did not need to lose any more.

I finally got my base calories to the point where I was no longer losing weight. Want to guess what it was? The exact amount that has been recommended by the calculations on the web. I guess I should've believed them in the first place.

In addition, because protein is expensive, I decided to try and do something with it: try to gain muscle by getting an exercise bike and using it while I played my video games. This meant that I had to eat more, to compensate for the extra exercise.

The results of this side experiment were absolutely fascinating. For the first time in my life, I actually gained upper body muscle.

I found a really good website, called Eat More to Weigh Less. While I was not trying to lose weight, it really helped me understand how your metabolism works, and the damage I had done to myself by eating so little all those years.

Granted, I hadn't been eating at quite that lower level, all my life. But I had been doing it to some extent and it just got worse in the three years before 2016. A lot worse.

At first, increasing my metabolic rate led to nothing but annoyance. I had to start cutting my fingernails more often. I had to start washing my hair more often, as my head's oil production increased.

And oh my goodness, eating all that food. It takes ages to eat enough food. Unless of course you go to a restaurant and then you can do your entire days' allowance in one meal. However this leaves me hungry for the rest of the day, and I don't exactly appreciate being hungry.

And that was another thing I did not appreciate about increasing my metabolic rate. I started getting hungry again. Apparently, if you eat a small enough amount for a long enough time, your brain turns off your hunger signals.

In addition, remember my social anxiety that results from being around people? It was one of the reasons why I had stopped eating in the first place. I don't get hungry when I'm anxious. I still don't. But there's no way I can eat that much food at night, so I had to start eating at work anyway.

So there were a lot of roadblocks along the way. Including the reactions of other people. Most people did not understand, and thought that my sudden calorie counting was an indication of an eating disorder, not a solution to one.

The few people that I did explain it to, while supportive, still did not fully understand. I believe there was only one person who actually got it.

This made it very difficult to eat while being around other people. Added to that, was the fact that when you start eating twice as much, you start paying twice as much for groceries. Which meant I had less money to go around for say, going to a restaurant.

I tried, for a while. Going out to eat with friends was part of my routine, and being autistic I hate giving up my routines. But it just got too difficult, to watch other people eating what looked like massive amounts of food, when I knew that if I ate that much, I couldn't eat anything else for the day. Add in the judge-y stares from other people and I just gave up.

(I'm not kidding about the restaurant meals. The burger I used to get at Ruby Tuesday's is over 2000 calories. That's without fries or any other kind of side.)

I even got a pressure cooker in July, and started cooking a lot. I had always been a baker, not someone who cooks.

The reason why am writing this post, is that I am a year into this recovery process. I'm more comfortable talking about it, and I wanted to record my progress.

So if you add in my exercise calories, I am now eating over 2000 calories a day. This still seems slightly incredible to me, but I've gotten used to it. I even get a little resentful, if I don't get to eat everything. For example if on a Sunday I don't exercise as much, and watch TV a lot.

I'm finally starting to see good things coming from increasing my metabolic rate. I can function well with less sleep. I'm not quite as cold, usually, although this is still a problem.

And I can carry all three cats in one crate, although I cannot lift it or lower it to the ground. That's over 45 pounds. Never in my life did I think that I would ever be able to lift that much. OK technically I'm still just carrying it, not lifting. But still.

Physically I feel stronger and more able to do things. It's nice to be able to lift stuff, even stuff that doesn't weigh as much is 45 pounds. And not be exhausted.

Emotionally I am still struggling with this whole eating disorder thing. I can still feel the impulse to eat less when I'm stressed, and to eat more when I'm not. This is not a good thing.

It's kind of like being a recovering alcoholic. Other people around you can have that one drink with dinner, but you can't. In my case, that means other people can have that celebratory cake and go a little over their calories and then eat a little less the next day to make up for it. I can't.

I think at this point, that's the hardest thing for other people to understand. I cannot let up on this yet. Maybe someday I will be able to "have that one drink," but not now. Yes, it's been a year since I started "fixing" this, but it's going to take more than a year to fix the habits of a lifetime.

The Third Appliance

Monday night through Wednesday afternoon I had a massive headache from a fever, although no other symptoms of illness. This doesn't happen often but enough that I'm kind of used to the concept. Then Wednesday night I had some kind of intestinal blockage or gas that was quite painful but went away overnight--just had the echoes of pain in my body the next day, if you know what I mean. 

So when I came home Wednesday and went to wash my hands after using the bathroom, and discovered that the third appliance in as many months had gone bad, I was not in a good place to deal with it.

My hot water heater is over ten years old, and they only have a ten year average lifespan. (Mine has to be at least 12.) So it's not a big surprise that it died. 

However when I called the parents to see if daddy would try to light the pilot light (if it was the problem) he said no. He'd never worked with gas water heaters. (I fail to see the difference between lighting the pilot light on a water heater vs gas logs or a gas stove top, both of which he has done multiple times.) 

I just got so frustrated. People say they want to help me but when the time comes, there's always some reason they can't. Honestly I think my sister, who visits twice a year, is  the only one that I don't have to pay to help me do household stuff. 

Between what I couldn't say (but wanted to) and the entire week stress and the whole third appliance and money and stuff, I literally lost the ability to say anything. And on the phone you can't do charades. It took me five minutes of repeating over and over in my head "I gotta go" before I could force it to go verbal. 

Which of course upset them no end. So I got multiple calls (including one the next morning while I'm trying to get to work on time, grr) wanting me to make them feel better about their decision not to help me. 

(I have more sympathy for intermittently verbal autistics now than even before--this has happened to me previously but never with someone I love and never on the phone. The frustration was infuriating.) 

It's not that I was even mad at them. If I'm not willing to go out in the dark and unscrew the door and try to light the pilot light I really can't object when someone else doesn't want to. 

But since they were not available I had to make decisions and find someone who was, and I didn't have the emotional capacity to soothe their guilt and do all that too. 

In the end E-- (an HVAC company I deal with) came through for me again. I decided to buy a new system rather than trying to fix this one given that even if it could be fixed it's going to permanently die soon anyway. 

By Friday afternoon they were out there installing a tankless water heater (it has a >98% efficiency rating!). They didn't want to stay overtime on Friday (I imagine) so they fixed the old one so I'd have hot water over the weekend and they'll finish installing the new one on Monday. They didn't charge extra to do that, either. 

Turns out the hot water overflow valve had been going bad for months and finally broke. I'm glad I had forgotten to open my gas bill for January until last night because it's massive (yet more money down the drain--this time literally) and I would have been distressed and confused as to why. 

I spent yesterday's walk researching my new heater and it's pretty awesome. I said I wanted efficient and durable and they hooked me up with the most efficient and longest heater coil warranty on the market. 

After work Friday I stopped by Duncan Donuts on the way home and got a small box of munchkins. When I went behind the house to see how far they'd gotten (etc) I held the box up and announced "I brought motivation!" One of them goes, "ooh, we love motivation!" So that made me feel good. 

And my gas bill should go down (below what had been normal) and that will help too. But I had to stop paying extra on my mortgage, which is disappointing but it _is_ why I refinanced last year. 

This Might Help With Depression

Okay, so I've tried St. John's Wort (an herbal SSRI) and I've tried multiple SSRIs and SNRIs and I hate the side effects of every last one of them. The weight gain and metabolism slow-down are bad enough, but add into that the fact that they didn't actually lift my depression, they just made it so I didn't care. I felt wrapped in fuzzy cotton.

After I tried getting off of them completely, and without having anything anti-depressant in my system realized I did need something, I did some reading.

I want to share what I found, but I also want to warn you: this isn't going to work for everybody. It might not work for you. And this isn't woo-woo stuff, if you're looking to go anti-science. It's based on science and how the brain works.

So first, a little primer in brain chemistry. (If this is your field, and you are aggravated by certain things I've simplified or glossed over, I'm sorry. I was trying to make this understandable. You can leave comments if you want.)

Your brain communicates through the nervous system. Millions of nerves. Each one is a neuron. And they don't actually connect end to end. There's a tiny (very tiny) gap between each one and the next. If the nerve wants to communicate something to the next nerve, it sends a neurotransmitter across the gap. The receiver nerve accepts the neurotransmitter and then trashes it. Kind of like sending someone a letter and they read it and then throw it in the trashcan.

A neurotransmitter is just a molecule. It's a big molecule, though not as big as some, but it's pretty big (no, you still can't see it!). This is important later.

A SSRI or SNRI is short for "selective serotonin/norepinephrin reuptake inhibitor". What it does, it prevents the nerve from throwing the neurotransmitter in the trashcan. It put it into the "recycle bin" of the brain where it can be used again.

This is based on the hypothesis that depression is caused by a shortage of the appropriate neurotransmitter. Some people lack serotonin, some lack norepinephrine, and some lack dopamine (Wellbutrin is the only dopamine helper anti-depressant that I know of). This is a widely accepted hypothesis that seems well-supported by the clinical evidence. In other words, you find the neurotransmitter you're short on, make your brain have more of it, and your depression is reduced or lifts.

My personal unproven untested hypothesis is that the side effects are because your brain is trashing the neurotransmitters for a good reason. Maybe they lose one tiny hydrogen off the middle somewhere and become a problem. Whatever; you're supposed to use a new one every time (like a salad bar and the plates).

So, why the drugs? Why can't you just put dopamine into a pill and take it?

Remember how I said the neurotransmitters are fairly big molecules? There are nerves outside the brain, but for the ones inside the brain, the brain makes those molecules inhouse, so to speak. There's a blood-brain barrier around your brain (because brains don't have blood inside them, just on the outside) and it stops any big molecules from getting through. This is to stop (most) viruses and bacteria from attacking the brain. They're big molecules and can't get through.

But little molecules can make it through, like oxygen (which is oxygen-oxygen, O2 technically, and thus a molecule made up of two atoms).

And the building blocks that the brain uses to make neurotransmitters can get through as well. The brain is very efficient. It uses building blocks in many different brain molecules, without having to have a specific set for each one. In other words, if one of the building blocks is red, it can appear in multiple types of brain-manufactured molecules. Red-Green-Blue, Red-Blue-Blue, etc.

So. Idea. What if you took the building blocks in a pill and flooded your system with those? Would your brain make more of Red-Green-Blue simply because it had more Red, Green, and Blue available now? Perhaps some kinds of depression are simply because the building mechanism is slower than normal for that neurotransmitter?

Dopamine is made of an amino acid and two vitamins. It's phenyalanine and two of these three: B2, B1, B6. (I don't actually remember.)

I tried taking phenylalanine and a balanced B-100 formula vitamin (100 mg of each of the 5 major B vitamins)(which is why I don't remember which of those three it is). I took 2 of the 500 mg L-phenylalanine pills. This made me feel better (less depressed) but not quite enough, so during the summer I take 2.5 of the 500 mg L-phenylalanine and during the winter go up to 3 (to combat the Seasonal Affective Disorder).

It has to be L-phenylalanine, as the D- version is useless to the human body. (You can buy these in L- only or DL- and the DL- is cheaper because they didn't have to separate the two.) The human body uses the left version only. I've also found that only Source Naturals brand works, but your milage may vary and it's not like I tried anything but the Vitacost generic brand as an alternative.

Now there's always the placebo effect, which I will grant you. But my sample set (the number of people I know doing this where it works for their depression) is greater than one, it's (tada) two. My brother also does this, and it works for him. I think he has to take 3 or 4 of the 500 mg tablets, which would make sense given his larger weight. (He's a boy, I'm girl, so yes, he weighs more than me. He's also taller.)

Before you run out to try this, WAIT.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not even a biology chemist. I'm just an analytical chemist and I don't work in this field. So, I can't really recommend anything. But I will say you need to be careful. This is your brain you're screwing around with.

I'd say, "Get off the anti-depressant you're currently on before you try this" and "do that part slowly." I'd say, "Make sure your doctor knows what you're doing. Their eyes may have this 'huh?' look, so you probably should add on the end, 'it's like taking Wellbutrin'."

I'd say, "Make sure you keep an eye on yourself and your symptoms, and if you feel like you're getting worse, get back on your normal anti-depressant immediately."

And definitely, if what you're taking right now works for you, don't try this. Honestly.

The side effects I have noticed are: a feeling like an extended adrenaline rush. This means you're taking too much and back off a pill.

The other side effect that is long term is a certain lack of ability to access the word you want to use. This is mostly just annoying for me. I'll come up with words that are close but not quite what I wanted.

For example, I've said that I had to "put new shingles on my ceiling." I've referred to my brother's driveway as a parking lot, although in my defense there were six cars in it at the time. (But I wasn't trying to be funny and the word I wanted to use was driveway.) I've said "thank you" instead of "you're welcome."

So, for dopamine (what I do): L-phenylalanine + one Balanced B-100 mg vitamin.
For serotonin: melatonin + one Balanced B-100 mg vitamin.

No matter how many of the L-phenylalanine tablets you have to take, you only need 1 of the Balanced Bs.

I can't supplement serotonin. Look up serotonin syndrome if you're actually wanting to know why. Point being here, I haven't tried that version of this method personally so I don't know if it'll work.

To wrap up: if you try this, please be careful. I don't want anybody to get hurt. There are people who can't supplement phenylalanine, and if you are one, don't try this (please say that was obvious).

Unlike a prescription antidepressant, you should notice within a day if this is working for you. (If it's not, add a pill; if that doesn't work at all, give up on this method. If it feels "a little better" add a half a tablet more. I wouldn't think you should go above 4 of the 500 mg tablets unless you're a really large person (we're talking 300 pounds or more). Start at 2 tablets and work your way up by half a tablet.

And unlike a prescription antidepressant, there is no carryover effect. You have to take this every day.

Time of day: since dopamine is an "activator" neurotransmitter (wakes you up, sort of), take it in the morning. If you are trying the serotonin version, take that at night, as serotonin is a "calming" neurotransmitter (it comes from melatonin after all!)

Please be careful and please be aware that these aren't "harmless" because you found them in the vitamin aisle.

Shatter Me

I figured it out.

You know how a windshield for a car is made? It's a sheet of glass sandwiched between two pieces of very strong plastic. If a rock hits your windshield while you're going 80 mph, even if it punches through, the plastic will hold the shattered glass in place until you get it replaced. (Which you had better do soon if the rock actually made it through the windshield rather than just shattering the glass.)

This keeps the glass from flying inward, in deadly shards, at you. It keeps you safe.

But no matter what you do, you can't fix the glass afterwards. You have to replace it. If you keep driving with it (say it's only a star-pattern crack in the glass) the glass will continue to break. Worse, it'll wear at the plastic from the inside, scrape scrape scrape.

People aren't windshields. They're supposed to heal.

I don't know how.

Pippin's death shattered me. All through and through. But the "plastic" kept me looking mostly intact. I mean, people could tell I was hurting, but nobody could see just how bad the damage was. Nobody understood that only a thin shell kept me together.

Since then things just kept getting worse. Daddy had a seizure. Scary, terrifying, to see him in the hospital afterwards, unable to remember from moment to moment, and certainly not the strong, capable, emotion-rock of my life he had been.

One of my uncles died, rather unexpectedly. I really liked him, too. He was one of the ones that was "friends" with me (if you can call us friends when we didn't see each other for years at a time).

My company decides to sell my part of it to someone else. Now we're in the middle of the transition to the other company and everything's changing and nobody's communicating. (We found out the hard way that the new badges will only let you in the door during a certain time period around your "schedule." Luckily it wasn't me personally that got locked out, but I add this so you realize just how badly nobody's communicating.)

I develop a lovely eating disorder where I can't just eat more (because it's not anorexia) and I can't just eat normally (because I don't know--apparently, I've been doing a mild version of this eating disorder all along).

And I get "burning tongue syndrome" on top of it, a condition where they don't know what causes it, what makes it go away, or if it will ever go away short of my death. So I'm now in constant physical pain, too.

I think the plastic's wearing thin. I'm starting to feel the shards.

And I don't know how to heal. I don't know what I'm doing wrong that I'm not healing.

All I know how to do is put my head down and keep going forward, in the hopes that something, somewhere, will be better. Easier.