The alarm on my phone just sounded. It’s 2pm, the officially randomly designated time I take my afternoon meds. I had to start using an alarm when I started this medication, because I proved unreliable when I just tried to remember. I’ve taken a variety of medication in my life but this is the first one to be taken “Between Meals” and adjusting is hard.
On the one hand, using my phone as an alarm for this is a reasonable — dare we say intelligent? — use of modern technology. It’s taken me nearly 10 years but I finally (usually) know where my phone is, generally remember to charge it, and figure out many of the useful features. So when I kept forgetting to take my meds, the alarm was a good resource. Since I started using it, I haven’t missed a day. Even if I can’t stop what I’m doing at alarm time, it’s a sufficient enough reminder that I do get to the task. Every day. I’m 100% “med compliant” with my phone.
On the other hand…(there’s a downside? What?!?!). Using my alarm is a very public event. If I don’t dismiss the alarm in advance, it actually makes a noise. Maybe I’m out in the store. Maybe I’m in the library. Maybe I’m just really busy and can’t get to the phone within the first 10 seconds of the alarm.
Now, sometimes I do dismiss the alarm in advance. It happens occasionally that I take my meds a little early. Thankfully, I don’t need my meds at exactly the same time every day so I have some freedom.
And no, the sound of the alarm isn’t even that bad at the store, or even in the library. It doesn’t start out really loud, and I can usually unearth the phone relatively quickly, freeing the public from my noise pollution.
But… then there are those moments when I’m just really busy. And almost always, that “really busy” happens around my kids. That’s just reality. I’m with my kids a lot. We’re together while I teach and they learn. We’re together while I take them to and from their extra curricular activities. We’re near each other when I’m making dinner, or lunch, or a complicated snack. This is our lives, one of togetherness. And (perhaps because of all the time teaching and learning) all my kids now read fairly quickly. So if I can’t get to my phone, one of the kids will swipe the alarm off and let me know it’s time. Time to take my meds. And when they remind me, it hurts.
It hurts because I don’t want them to know I take any medicine. I know that’s an impossible goal — with all that togetherness it is inevitable that they’re going to see me taking medications. Really, it hurts because I don’t want them to know what kind of medication I take, or why.
I’m on antidepressants. Again. It was a difficult choice to start taking antidepressants. A choice I worked through and talked about with my care team. A necessary step, at that time, because I was using so much of my energy on managing my depression, anxiety, PTSD, and assorted other crazies. This time on the med wheel I’m taking something radically different. I can say honestly that three months in on this med has been the best experience I’ve had with any “emotion altering” pharmaceutical. This radically different medication has made my life better. Making my life better makes the lives of the people who love me better.
I want to say, humbly but with satisfaction: I take medication for my mental health. My mental health care is just as important and real as my physical health care.
But I don’t say that. I don’t even really feel it. So when my kids innocently help me out with a reminder to take my meds, the feelings of shame, failure, embarrassment, and incompetence all rear up at once. If I had enough willpower, my kids wouldn’t be exposed to this sort of thing.
And I know it's all part of the crazy in my head. The mixed up ideas of what I'm responsible for, and what I am not. And knowing and loving me will help my kids be compassionate with others. One day, my kids will fully realize that I live with The Crazies. They'll look back and understand that those weekly appointments I attended was therapy. They'll know that the meds I took were an effort to make myself better, for the benefit of everyone. They will have lived through all the times in their life that I cracked under the pressure, and they won't be surprised that I'm a "high functioning" person struggling with mental health.
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