Spring forward, fall back down

I'm catching up. On everything. It feels very productive. It feels great!

I stupidly left my prozac at home when we left for our vacation; and then I couldn't get my new prescription filled in Spain. Here are some side effects of my having fallen off the medication for over a week now:

- While we were at a layover in Madrid on our way home, I was filled with rage over... what? I don't remember. I just remember walking past a vending machine in the airport and thinking, "this is that same rageful feeling I had the last time I was off medication for a while. not good." It might have also had something to do with the not having slept the night before and spending an entire day in airports and on airplanes.

- Last night I had a brief (45 second) temper tantrum over (a) my fingers going numb after I got up from typing at the computer, (b) T noticing a stain on my underwear and (c) having chosen to walk 7 city blocks barefoot and suffering the blistering consequences. I threw myself down on the couch and tried to cry, but couldn't. T simply waited 45 seconds, then we left and had a fun night out with friends.

- I have had a really hard time summoning the motivation to walk the two blocks to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled; summoning the motivation to stay logged in to e-mail to respond to well-wishers; summoning the motivation to brew coffee.

- I'm about to walk out the door to have dinner with T. This thrills me. I am ecstatic. On prozac, I would be merely pleased, content, satisfied. I can't wait to have beans and rice in my belly.

Why do I always write about forgetting to take my medication? It seems that I slip the fact that I'm on prozac into conversation regularly. The reason is that I want to normalize it. For all the talk about how anti-depressants are handed out like candy, there is an awful lot of stigma surrounding medication and mental health. Maybe someone out there is considering medication but still thinks it's "the easy way out" or that they just need to "suck it up." I'm not saying everyone who thinks they could use prozac should get on it; but I want to put my own experiences with it out there. Why not?

Disclaimer: I tend to poke fun at myself on here and be a little self-deprecating because it makes me feel more comfortable writing about this stuff. But I also fear I run the risk of coming across as a real jerk or something. I am not a real jerk or something.

So, anyway... I want to write all about the wedding and the honeymoon and all that. But last night, I sat down at a bar with my friend Best Woman, and let loose with a nice long vent about all the things that stressed me out during the reception, and I felt a lot better afterward, and right now I just don't feel like writing about it. I will, eventually. It'll probably come out in little snippets, etc. But anone who reads this probably doesn't want a long re-cap anyway. So suffice it to say, it was beautiful, I had a TON of fun despite whatever gripes came out of my mouth last night, and I can not WAIT to get the pictures back!

School starts on Monday. I went to campus yesterday because I'm involved with the National Immigration Project of our NLG chapter and I got to do a little representing to the 1Ls. It was pretty fun to see all the now-old/familiar faces running around, all of us acting all big and tough and comfortable in the law building, despite the fact every single one of us fears those first day reading assignments taunting us from our Word document syllabi. I'm one of the "lucky" ones who is not on a journal and not doing OCI -- does that make me dumb? I'm not sure yet. But the flipside of the exciting commencement of a new year and getting to see school friends again is that every single conversation, without fail, involves at least one moment of "WTF -- am I supposed to be doing that?!?!" Seriously. This is what people mean when they say law school is stressful. At least to me. The stress is in the constant feeling like you're not measuring up, like you're not running fast enough, and you're constantly two steps behind. I'm going to do my best to push past that little voice in my head this semester, and just do it my way, and trust myself to get to where I want to be.

Now, I must go because somewhere a few blocks away there is a bean and cheese burrito with my name on it. I wouldn't want to let it down.