My Mental Health In October

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Things have been up and down in my head this month. I’ve been taking Wellbutrin for about a month. The side effects have been strange. There’s a chance it could be messing with my anxiety. Overall I’ve been trying to make positive decisions for myself. I’m not sure how successful it will be.

Next month I’ll be working on finishing a draft for a project I started last year. It’s been getting good feedback. The idea has been stuck in my mind for a year. Part of what frightens me about it is that the theme looming behind it all involves succumbing to faith that is darker than one will admit to oneself. What that means is that I’m holding up a mirror to old, terrible things I used to believe.

The reflection isn’t pretty. To make it more palatable, I’m mixing it with eldritch horror like in The King in Yellow. To organize it, I’m going to partake from the Divine Comedy again. This time, it’ll be the second, lesser known Purgatorio. My choice isn’t ironic; Dante built his religious fanfiction with Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory all mirroring each other. Each could be quite different if one changed assumptions about the entire mythos.

I hope all of this will help me defeat the nagging voice in my head telling me to quit before I begin. That voice has become a little more insistent in some ways. It’s normal considering the change in my crazy pill routine.

Speaking of which, the changes to my brain chemistry have been a bear to deal with. It’s like running blindfolded through a jungle. Eventually one has to accept the fact that one will run into trees and get stuck in the underbrush.

In better news, I’ve harvested all the peppers I’m going to grow. The garden will be mowed, and I will plan out next year’s stuff to grow. I have an eye on adding lettuce to the patch, along with tomato plants I’ve grown myself. Right now I’m fermenting different kinds of hot sauce. Two bottles are of a mash that should yield a sauce that’s more tabasco-like. I tasted the one I just made, and it’s got a nice kick to it.