Pharmaceutically inspired ramblings

Oh, what a couple of weeks can do. Well, make that a couple of weeks packed with serotonin filled medicine goodness. Our bodies and brain chemistries are such beautifully delicate things.

I realized today in the middle of phone calls that are arranging the final details of the first project of my new job that I'm feeling confident. The fog is gone. The hopelessness is gone. The difficulties of a few life situations haven't changed, but that feeling that they will never get better is gone as well. For the first time in months, I feel capable of living life well, not just existing. I've tackled both work and home with energy and enthusiasm and started making plans for a little trip I want to take sometime this year. I have no idea how I'll manage it yet, but I know that I will somehow. I even feel up to balancing my checkbook and tackling my paperwork mountain.

Shakespeare knew what he was talking about when he said that nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. I'm just glad my chemistry is somewhat more balanced now to let me think clearly. I'm also beginning to enjoy that feeling of social anger about our health care system. It's just so short sighted to see only the cost of providing health care. You simply have to factor in what people can contribute when they are physically and mentally capable. We short change ourselves, our culture and our economy by looking only at costs.

I'll save the rant for another time. Just thinking about the broader implications of health care costs made me realize something significant. When I'm taking medication and thinking more clearly, I can think about things beyond myself and the small circle of my activities and influence. Depression is a very self-centered thing, not in the way of selfishness or vanity, but in that it tends to be all about me: my hurts, my sorrows, my pains, my losses, my lacks. If, when this ever lurking illness grabs me, I can make the negatives of primary importance, I can make the positives equally important when I'm "well." In fact, it feels right and natural to do so.

I wonder if this is a chicken/egg issue. If I focus on working on the goals and dreams, will mental balance follow, or do I need the mental balance to see the goals and dreams? Either way, I know they're intricately and inevitably related, and I'm determined to have all three.