I started taking antidepressants to help me stay in control, but sometimes you just want to cry...
The best friend I lost, the new human I gained and the moment I finally cried
It was mid-2023, roughly 2.5 years into my journey with antidepressants.
The journey up until this point had been smooth sailing. I was beginning to get control of my life, manage my emotions and act like a reasonably responsible adult.
Self-belief was high, self-deprecation was low.
Sertraline was helping me take the edge off. It was giving me consistency. But not the whole spectrum of emotions.
This was a fair trade off in my view.
But after a moment of forgetfulness and laziness lead me to run out of my meds, some of the emotions started peaking through.
Then after a weird and wonderful string of events I was reacquainted with them.
All of them!
After a big day at the cafe, I returned home.
Kicked off my shoes, pulled out my phone and sat down on my little single man’s bed (little rickety thing I got for dirt cheap at Ikea).
I had a message from one of the homie’s.
A little child… his first born!
I was sitting on the edge of my bed staring at a picture of this new human assume its place in the Earth’s history books.
While I was looking into its adorable little face, I started to sob.
The sob turned to a cry and the cry to a wail.
I was immediately pulled to so many different places in my recent and not-so-recent memories. The weight of lives gained and lost came crashing down on me as my soul opened up in its rawest possible form.
3 things played on my mind in this moment.
The birth of this new baby boy
The tragic loss of a young person (friend of a friend)
The memory of losing one of my best mates and mentor in early 2021
All of this hit me at once.
It was beautiful but so overwhelming.
While I continued staring at the photos and videos of this tiny child, I was reminded of so much good.
You see, the kid belongs to my best mate Eamon. Best friends since high school, we have encountered and endured so many twists, turns and sub-plots together.
At various points in the last 10 years, our lives individually had been hurdling toward disastrous finales.
Thankfully, we survived!
With time and maturity we both found peace in our own souls and were now on great paths, being true to ourselves and living harmoniously.
I was full of gratitude to see my friend beginning his new family. He deserved it. He had earned the love, security and adoration of a wife who cares about him and a child who will inevitably look up to him.
He now had what he had always wanted, and I was so happy for him.
As I began to cry tears of joy, a second thought entered my line of sight. Something I had not at all prepared for.
A very young man and the friend of a friend had tragically and suddenly lost his life only days prior, and I couldn’t help but feel for his soul, his parents and his best friend.
Even though I had never met this person, it felt very real.
I was sad for them.
Sadness combined with gratitude to have Eamon here with me, having his first child.
The window to my soul had now been fully opened, and the connection to these threads had begun pouring in.
The sertraline had relinquished its grip and I was free to feel it all.
While shining the light into this corner of my subconscious, another memory appeared - my best buddy Tim.
Timothy Larin (aka Thomas to me) passed away on 8/2/2021.
He was like an older brother to Eamon and me. The cool older guy who showed us the ropes. Showed us how to get into trouble (and how to get out of it).
He was a mentor. A best friend. A role model. Our fan. Our brother.
I think about him every day.
He would be so proud of Eamon and his achievement.
The funny/not so funny thing about this moment (now 2 years on from Tim’s passing) is that it was the first time I had properly cried for Tim.
When he passed, my emotions were subdued by the medication, I couldn’t cry.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
This made me even more sad because he was someone I loved so much, he deserved to be cried for.
Feeling all of the love, sadness, grief, joy, regret, adulation and gratitude that I felt in such a short space of time was a lot - but I am grateful for it. This is life.
The unavoidable circle of life and death had been poetically laid out to me in plain sight.
I cried a lot.
I let it all out. Everything that I was feeling, released in that moment.
All I could do was sit back and smile at the end of it.
Once the snot and tears had been wiped away, what remained was a sense of appreciation.
Everything that is here is perfect (not actually perfect, but in a sense is because there’s no alternative version of now).
Celebrate the good things.
Accept the not-so-good things.
Meditate on and see the beauty in all things.
This life is dynamic, difficult, challenging, rewarding, painful and beautiful.
Once the dust had settled, I got back on my medication and have remained on it (for the most part, more to come on that later) ever since.
I loved the fact that I got to cry for Tim, but for me this rare moment of relief is not worth the daily struggle I had previously endured.
So onward I go. Will I get off antidepressants one day? Maybe.
But also maybe not. Time will tell.
But I am glad I got to have this moment, I felt a real sense of relief, and I’m glad I got to share the story.
So, thank you all for reading this.
Thank you all for being here.
With gratitude,
SAV 🙏
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