the meds are helping

i am... amazed by everyone's donations. idk what to say except thank you. thank you forever for that kindness.

i'm not exactly out of the woods yet. but the meds are helping. for a week now, i've been on alprazolam and sertraline (which some of yall may respectively know as xanax and zoloft), and holy shit the difference is night and day. well, not full day; but a lot of day still. i feel like time is (somewhat) flowing at a normal pace again.

i'll be off anxiolytics in a couple days, but as soon as today, my daily dose of antidepressants doubles. which should help cuz at the previous dosage, i could feel the effects starting to fade in the late evening and early morning. i have a full backup tablet of alprazolam in case things get ugly in these transitory days, but hopefully they shouldn't. crossing my many fingers on getting used to the new chemistry at play sooner than later.

the dark thoughts... have not fully receded. it feels more like they're contained, behind a thick plexiglas wall where they cannot hurt me; at least not directly. they're still scary to contemplate and hard to ignore. but ridding myself of them for good is what therapy is for, isn't it?

the first sess with that one therapist went... okay. my usual therapist is a very compassionate autistic trans man, with whom i can talk of anything. with whom i've talked about my alterhumanity, even! whereas this new one feels more like... some random person idk how to approach. which is a very normal feeling when you meet a new therapist, i know. i just hope everything does work out with him in the end.

after that first sess, i've been given homework. gotta write down every single bad feeling that pops up, and what i was thinking or doing right before it happened. determining triggers and how these brains process their environment, basically. something tells me my therapy notebook is gonna fill up naaaasty fast with this exercise but hey! data.

in the hopefully unlikely but still very possible event that cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't stick with me, it's good to know that my usual therapist is presently undergoing specialised training to help people overcome their traumas. which i'm full of! so y'all can rest assured that even if the therapy i first set out to get doesn't work for any reason, i still have a solid plan B that will also improve my mental health substantially.

holding on is easier now. i am slowly returning to normalcy. i'm not losing hope.