I took an Effexor this morning.

I've been mulling over the advice I've been given by people I know and by people I don't know (that would be all of you 'anonymous' people....and hey, would it hurt ya to sign a comment? Do you have any idea how much I need closure?), and I've decided to go ahead and try the pills. This comment was particularly helpful: "Do what you love to do. Feel every moment as a precious thing. Tap into the love and joy around you and in you. Laugh. Resolve to let go of the fear that grips you, or at least loosen its suffocating hold. Leap before you look. That's how you can resolve to be happy. While you learn how to do all that, pills can help. You can always stop taking them if they don't."

I've read through that a bunch of times. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Doing what you love to do...that's important. Joy is important. Now...the leaping before you look part....well, I have lots of stories about the times I leapt without looking and the results were generally not pretty. But the idea of leaping before you look is dear to my soul. I'm just afraid to do it much anymore. I think that part of me just expresses itself in increments with tiny little laspses in my impulse control.

Perhaps I should just try bungee jumping as a religious experience. The ultimate leap.

Nah. That's too cliche.

Maybe pole vaulting would be better. Yeah...how many 40 year old first time pole vaulters do you know? That's what I thought. Although I do wonder if I came running up to the thing (the goal post, the bar...whatever you call it), and I pushed down with that big stick and started to jump....is it possible that my weight could actually snap the stick in two? That would be embarrassing. It would probably require therapy to get over it. And then I'd be right back where I started again.

Leaping without looking is how I ended up out of the south and back in Ohio (and coincidentally, it's how I ended up in the south in the first place). I'm not saying it's an entirely bad thing being here...I wouldn't have met Jadyn if I'd stayed in Georgia; but it was definitely a huge leap without much forethought. I just knew that I needed SOMETHING to change. Anything at all. But when I got back here, I just felt so shell-shocked. I walked around in a fog for weeks wondering, 'omigod, what did I do?' until I finally got used to the idea that I was here.

I had managed to forget while I was in Georgia what my family is like. And let me interject that I love my sisters and my mother...but I'd forgotten what it can be like to be around them. I'd forgotten how much drama they move about in and how easy it is to get caught up in it. I'd forgotten how abrasive their speech to one another is. I came here and felt like my skin was going to be burned off my body by all the caustic remarks. I'd come here in the first place to have their support, but I didn't realize how tender I'd gotten in the years apart from them. I wasn't used to being spoken to that way anymore. It hurt until I toughened up again and learned to dish it out as well as take it.

It's funny...Jadyn says she could tell early on that I loved her because I was tender with her. I didn't talk to her like I talked to my sisters. I don't know if she ever understood that talking to them the way that I do was self-defense.

You know how I said a few posts back that I was attracted to 'tough yet vulnerable'? I think that's what my family is like in a way. Abrasive as hell on the outside, but I think they're all fragile on the inside. They've all been hurt. The worst thing you can do to someone in my family who is upset or sad is to try to be kind to them. You have to call them 'bitch' and try not to hug them or be too nice. Being nice opens the gate for tears to come, and we all hate that. We like that vulnerable stuff to stay inside where it belongs.

But here lately, my inside is all hanging out on the outside.

And that's why I took the effexor.