Withdrawal From Cymbalta Sucks; but you can do it

Here’s the context: Me, sufferer of bad anxiety since a young age, switching my medication from Cymbalta to a better (for me) anti-anxiety medication. I’d been on Cymbalta from 2015 – 2018, 60-90mg dose. You can find which antidepressant is best for your body by completing a liver enzyme test. 

I sat down in my psychiatrist’s room feeling like I was going to just yell at her to fix me NOW instead of having a regular appointment. It had been the worst week, medically, of my life so far. In fact, the only time I count as worse is the 24 hours I once spent exploding after getting food poisoning from bad fish. Sure, withdrawal and a raging return of my anxiety is horrendous, but at least I’m not having repeatitive flashbacks of the taste of that bad fish coming back up, right?

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Published

I mentioned in a 2014 recap post that I had a short story accepted for publication by a literary magazine. Having been asked by everyone around me, “Are you proud? Because you should be.” I thought that I should let myself really be proud and give it a short post to itself. Preemptive apologies for this festival of self-love.

In Defence of the Teenage Girl

With the burgeoning success of posting videos on Vine, Instagram, Facebook etc, it is likely that you have come across some kind of short video of teenage girls doing something ’embarrassing’. Most likely you will see that these videos are accompanied by comments such as, “dumb sluts” / “would like to see them try that in my house” / “fuck this generation”. And so on because people need to type their own variation of the comment despite the 1000 comments already there.

Favourite Book Covers

This idea came from the wonderfully blog-talented, Wanton Creation / the Other Watson, click the link to check his favourites out.

Shall I open with the perhaps over-used line, you can’t judge a book by its cover? I know this is true for a lot of books (dodgy cover, good plot) and for people, the true subjects of the analogy, (pretty cover, ugly soul) but for whatever reason, I tend to feel more connected to the books whose covers caught my eye first. Picking a preferred cover for a specific books helps the book feel personal. When different books by the same author have covers in a similar style, I like to buy the one that matches what I have.

Brother’s Grimm

I am constantly reminded that the internet is brilliant because it can put you back in touch with things you thought you’d never see, hear or watch again. Remember having to listen to the radio for 3 hours so you could press record on your tape when the one song you wanted finally played? Good times.

When a Goose Meets a Moose

When a goose meets a moose,
At the house of a mouse,
I wonder if all three,
Sit down and drink tea

I wish that I could explain to you what the stories and poems I read turn into in my mind. A collage of emotions and thoughts and pictures, all mixed together. An image isn’t simply an image but has attached to it the emotion of the writing’s tone and circumstance. Imagination is behind all this. The mind’s eye acting out another’s imagination through symbols typed on a page. If you are a person who enjoys reading you know what I am trying to say, don’t you?

Companionable

My very own furry companion is stretched out right next to my laptop.

He’s not as well groomed as the shiny dog in the picture, but he makes me happy dirty coat and all.

How To Spend a Friday Night Alone

It’s Friday night and you are not throwing a dinner party or dancing at a new club or hooking up with a date or seeing a live show. You’re actually in your pajamas, alone, at home. Let me guess, it’s probably cold outside, you haven’t even spoken to any friends today and you’re on the cusp of ordering pizza to at least have some human contact today. Well don’t worry about being bored, being home alone on the weekend isn’t a bad thing! This is for those of us home alone on a Friday night with that restless feeling.

Glorious Sadness! Books With Sad Endings

For the most part, stories end well. That’s kind of how our story-telling works: character gets into conflict, then the conflict is resolved and he’s okay again. In fact, he’s probably better than before.

Sometimes, though, stories don’t follow this formula exactly and that ‘it’s now okay’ sentiment above proves false. Sometimes, characters end up in way worse situations than what they started with. These are the books that give you a downlift over an uplift. These are a sampling of the books that have tugged my heart the most, two of them actually made a tear roll down my cheek. But just one tear, one manly, strong tear. Pfft, I don’t sob over fiction. Whatever.

On Friendship

One of the saddest parts of growing older is that the number of friends you have goes down after highschool. People simply disappear into their own lives and journeys, and it can be a long time before you start building up new friendships. If you’re a shy person, well, you might have to prepare for some tough years of loneliness. Combat some shyness by taking a deep breath, smile, listen to the person, ask questions, just talk politely- it gets easier.

Read What Makes You Happy

There is a certain amount of pressure on people who call themselves writers or literary students / lovers, to read and love particular books. Sometimes though, the best thing to do for these masterpieces is to acknowledge their intelligence, appreciate it, but admit that you just personally didn’t like it.

Animal By-Products: “Ultimate in Recycling”

Interest in the uses of animal bits has gripped me lately. I keep wondering, “what’s in this that I don’t know about?” An episode of a BBC Three documentary, Kill It, Cut It, Use It took my personal views on the subject to a level higher than curiosity.