miracles of modern medicine

the end of the day comes; the students leave; i eat an apple and chat with a colleague.

i'm not exhausted. i'm not despairing. i didn't count the minutes til the end of the day.

i don't have the drowning look on my face that my new friend the first-year teacher has on her face all the time, poor thing.

i'm cheerful. i enjoy my apple. i didn't come crawling to the colleague's room in desperation. i don't feel that i need anything from her.

after i finish my apple i sit down to work. it's easy to do because my work all day has not been strenuous. and, i have already completed a chunk of work in between other things during the day because i've been using my time well.

the students act up a little but it doesn't bother me. if one of them crosses a line i administer the consequence without sturm und drang. it doesn't bother me - it bothers them. that's how it should be.

are you wondering who i am and what i did with your familiarly fucked-up friend?

i attribute some of this to my new skills from my outpatient program this summer, but i attribute about 90% of it to my medication.

finally, finally, finally my medication is working.

i was reading some things i wrote even six months ago and they seem so dramatic, so intensely high and low, so... insane. i can still have intense feelings but they don't knock me down like a big wave at the beach, whirl me round and stuff my mouth with sand, leave me bruised and scraped and battered. i understand now why Loopy was saying that there wasn't any "me" there anymore, why it seemed i'd disappeared into the extremes...

reading what i wrote six months ago, and comparing it to the state of normality i've reached, i am so grateful. so, so grateful. all my life i've desperately wished for peace, and found it elusive amid all the turbulent feelings and obsessive thoughts. i think i'm finding it at last.