Cat Doubles St John's Wort Dose & the Predictable Happens

Throughout this migraine hell, one amazing piece of good news: After all my desperate attempts to ask Cat to please, please take her natural depression medication at an adequate dose– she finally did. She doubled the dose of St. John’s Wort starting a month ago, and she’s been a very different person since!

She’s chatty, more playful, having more fun playing games and watching movies, going on drives and coming home in a good mood most of the time. She’s coming into my room to talk at least once a day if I can’t come out to just go over things with me and check in. We’re hugging good-night again. She complains about specific and immediate things rather than spiraling on and on over every thing that could possibly be wrong or go wrong. In short, she’s NOT depressed anymore. Even when she has a “bad” day sometimes she’s not exuding rage and pain anymore on those days… it’s just a normal “arg!” rant like anyone would give– and then she moves on!

[Picture me falling over in relief!]

She’s starting to realize that she can feel better and thus get along better with others when she takes her mental health seriously. We all tried to tell her that we couldn’t take her being such a fucking depressed BITCH anymore, and she actually– eventually!– listened and tried our advice. Now she is starting to realize that she does indeed need the extra brain support, as well as education on how to help herself deal with the sensitivities of being on the spectrum.

I’m really super proud of her! I’m just wish I didn’t have to go to such extremes to get the message through to her! My threatening to leave shook her up and badly, but I was dead serious. I can’t have my own mental health destroyed by someone who refuses to take care of their own mental health. Cat has a very hard time admitting when she’s wrong, and to her, the world is just that bad, it’s not her brain– and addressing the issue means admitting she was wrong and that’s not easy for her at all.

Now that we’re okay again, actually being casually friendly and mutually supportive, her relief that I’m giving her a chance to get better rather than reject her is palpable. She still sometimes checks in, questioning my willingness to stay on, especially given the many responsibilities of keeping up Heron Hold. I know it’s a challenge, and maybe it will overwhelm her or us at some point, but I want to live here as long as I can and make it my home. If Cat truly stops saying that’s she wants to give up on it all the time, maybe I will feel okay about finishing unpacking and decorating my damned bedroom already!

Meanwhile, my own Prozac meds have me back to a much more even keel, although I’m still emotionally versatile, so the dose isn’t too high. (I want to avoid a flattening gray to my moods, after all!) I’m more resilient, so it’s not as big of a deal when Cat’s grumpy, but I still need to maintain my boundaries and keep re-training my friend to NOT spiral into negative with me. She can bitch about the here and now, and we have been discussing the scary Big Picture stuff once a month. It’s made a difference. I need to make sure she doesn’t make me suicidal again, which means I can’t back track on my request to her to keep her bitches in the day to day in the realm of the now or very near future and to stop piling up on the Doom & Gloom Inevitable all the time!

I’ll make concession for her autism, but she has to make concessions for my PTSD. Only then can we count on a long-term living situation working out. Neither of us is “normal”– but that’s okay if we do our best to take care of ourselves and respect each other.

Maybe we’ll be okay…