Highs and Lows

Would you rather live a life full of extremely high highs and extremely low lows, or a life that was the average of these two extremes, but stayed constant? Is the pain we experience during our lows worth the reward of how we feel during our highs? Or would we be better off not to experience either?

These questions are hard to answer. Maybe the concept itself is too relative – I mean certain people probably experience these two sensations extremely differently depending on what they have gone through and how they have perceived it. That being said, is it fair to say some have experienced it worse than others? Is it fair to compare pain and joy, when feelings are internal and impossible to measure?

For a year of my life, I was on anti-depressant/anxiety pills. My highs and lows were numbed and I was brought more towards the average. I felt less, but was able to live more – or so I thought. I became reliant on these pills to feel okay. Missing a day or two would compeltely change how I felt and interacted with the world. I would panic or get very depressed sometimes. Othertimes I would be manic and ready to tackle the entire world at once.

I finally decided that enough was enough. I needed to stop. It started with me cutting the pills and reducing my dosage week by week. I felt genuine joy for the first time in a year. I felt a profound sense of sadness that had never gone away, but had been buried deep down into the depths of my soul. I struggled for months with experiencing these feelings once again. It was like seeing an old friend from high school who I really wanted to forget, but for some reason we continued to be in each other’s lives.

I have come to realize certain things about anxiety and depression since my time away from it. Looking at it from the outside-in is a new perspective for me. If one is feeling anxious, depressed, or having panic attacks, that is the body’s way of telling you that something is wrong – your environment, the people you are surrounding yourself with, or maybe the activities you’re doing. They are not fulfilling you. Something in your life is toxic and holding you back from your full potential. This signal is uncomfortable, but it is a call to action. Medicating yourself only dulls you, it is a bandaid fix that doesnt actually help you heal. What it does is make you forget about your problem. But, this doesn’t make the problem leave. It just gets pushed further and further inside. You need to change something in your life in order to be happy again.

Of course, nothing is ever so simple. Maybe the dulling is necessary for a bit of time. Maybe it has become too much to handle and you need a break from it all. Perhaps my time on medication allowed me to heal in other ways that I don’t fully understand. On the other hand, maybe it just delayed growth for a year. The problem is that no matter how many questions I ask and how much I try to find answers, nothing is ever so black and white. The answers I am searching for don’t come in neat little packages. They have nuances, and many take years to unravel. Years to fully understand. And as the years go by, the answers keep changing, and the questions never stop.