Life After Lamictal

I wish I could remember where my mind was that April morning when the weirdness began in earnest. Because t he day started like any other, with more sunshine.  I opened the window, felt the warmth, decided to walk.  I had to open with Bridget in Water Tower Place. S he'd been on a power trip e ver since her promotion to manager.  How far our friendship had fallen in just a short time. I thought of our closeness on 9/11, when I had walked home from the Hancock, too afraid to take the bus. When I got home, I heard Bridget calling up from the sidewalk. That's how I learned the towers had fallen. We spent the next four days at her apartment, sobbing together in front of the TV. Now here I was, thinking "she won't get me down today." It felt like a disconnect.  Walking along the lakefront would do me good.  The forecast called for 80 degrees, and the morning had a "last day of school" freshness to it that made me want to run. With Devotchka's "Queen

Sometime in 2003 At first I wrote them off as a startling nuisance, like the random couple who barged into my apartment one Saturday. I heard the key fumbling in the lock, two voices in the hall. Before I could rise from the couch, we were face to face in my living room.   The dark thoughts started just as abruptly, sometime during my 32nd year. One moment I'm watching  Friends , the next I'm chest-deep in self-loathing. That's how it happened you know. Suddenly, inexplicably. I tried to take responsibility for them, but they flew in from the outside. How could they be mine to own?   A quick flash of detestation, then  poof!  it's   gone. That's how they rolled. Like a bird at the kitchen window, they stayed just long enough to be seen. I couldn't tell if they were real or imagined.    Over time, I analyzed them to bits, puzzled them back together. They never seemed to be  about  anything. That's why I suspected Lamictal as their source. It was never a quest