Warning the following blog contains scenes of high drama!
I wrote this 2 days a go when I was really quite confused and desperate. I was afraid to publish it straight away as I showed it to 2 of my friends and they both immediately phoned me worried.
Before you read on I can promise you I am ok and back to my usual chirpy self…. With just an slight under current of what you read below…….
The raw honestly you read here in my blog… is my biggest flaw. It’s what people close to me have found a problem since I was a child. It was a problem at Cbeebies and other jobs even whilst I was on Prozac. Now I’m off it, I can feel my honesty magnifying and spawning like a creeping disease … I’m becoming increasingly afraid of myself and what I might say. I’m afraid I’ll upset people. I’m afraid my reactions will be over the top…. I am terrified!
The worse thing is I don’t know whether anything I’m feeling is real. Those 15 years on Prozac have certainly knocked my confidence for judging a situation and how I ‘should’ react to it. I remember feeling like this before Prozac, like an alien who didn’t truly belong on this world and definitely didn’t understand it. I felt like I was trapped behind a wall, I could see out of that wall but no one could see me, not the real me because she didn’t and doesn’t know how to belong in this life. I became a blank canvas where people could paint their ideas of who I should be on. I thought Prozac had killed my soul but I’m starting to think I had no choice but to bury it long before Prozac skipped in to my existence.
I suppose that’s why I turned to bulimia all those years a go – it felt like something I could control but like all those ways of self medicating, bulimia, anorexia, self harm and addiction, they just end up controlling you. I suppose that’s also why I stayed in a violent relationship. It made me feel alive. Even on Prozac I’ve felt like cutting my wrists sometimes just to make sure I was ‘really’ alive….It felt like only by being close to death I could confirm my existence. Of course I know that’s ridiculous – but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit it’s danced in my head like a sinister ghost on occasion.
Before I first started taking Prozac it was like my head was a room full of messy papers piled up from the floor to the ceiling. I could never decipher anything, moods, feelings and reactions were buried deep in my mind. Then Prozac came in to my life like a clever administrator. I instantly felt like all those messy papers in my head had been filed away and in some order too. My thoughts were clearer, focused but ultimately dulled, but they were tidy. However, I realise now it wasn’t a clever filing drug. It’s actually more like when you dejunk your life, Prozac dejunked my head by chucking some vital emotions out as rubbish. My emotions were removed, not filed. They were inaccessible.
I really thought when I stopped taking Prozac that feeling wouldn’t return, I thought my head would remain in some order…. but I can tell you it hasn’t. My head is once more a room full of messy papers and this time they’ve been screwed up and trampled on too, so it feels a million times worse.
Right now I ‘m tired. I feel like I’m on a tightrope and if I lose concentration for one second … I’ll fall. I don’t know if that’s normal? I wish someone would define normal for me. I wish there was a measure for it, I think we’d all feel better if we could measure our normal …. I’m struggling inside but on the outside I’m trying so hard to carry on cos I know that’s all I can do. I guess the upshot of all the above is….. Deep down I’m not doing so good and I don’t know if I can push through this – I don’t even know if I want to,
I’m writing this blog and I just want to hide away. I want to run and run and never stop. I really dont want to see or talk to anyone who will be worried….I don’t want people worrying about me cos it makes me feel even more powerless and I feel guilty for not making them happy. That’s the reason I’ve had a two week break from publishing this 4th blog – I’m scared of how honest I’ll be in my writing and how you’ll all take it. Will you now all say, “Oh right, she is actually nutty and shes weak too.”
But…. when I set out to do this I promised I’d be honest, I promised I’d give a true account of coming off Prozac warts and all. Otherwise there’s no point… I’d just be an actress acting and not another lost soul trying to see if there is a way home or even a safe place to go to. Trying to reach out to others, trying to tell the truth for what it’s worth.
I’m rehearsing panto at the time of writing this. It’s funny, I smile and I try really hard to not let my battered heart show through. Can it be seen through the veneer of my Sarah Jane Honeywell smile, as I skate around playing a 2 dimensional faery … I can feel cracks appearing.
Some people in panto have read this blog and are kind in knowledge of my struggle. Others have no clue and so the Prozac curse continues… I don’t want to tell them what I’m doing, for fear they’ll think I’m attention seeking or that they’ll judge me or use it as something to bash me with. Can I tell them I’m off Prozac after 15 years and struggling for fear of being judged? Entertainers are not meant to struggle. We aren’t allowed to be human. The show must go on and I’m a dancer, I’ve been trained to make sure it does go on and everyone is happy no matter what I’m feeling. I will not fail at that!
Today I think on Prozac or off it, I’m screwed. I still have to wear the people pleasing mask so maybe it’s easier if I do it with a Prozac silenced soul. I’m not giving up yet though – I think I can make it through the current darkness. I’m still hopeful there’s a light ahead, I still believe in magic….. I just wish I could see it.
Punk On Prozac 
SJ you are so obviously a wonderful person and a very talented girl. Your blog is inspiring, gut wrenching and incredible in its honesty once again. It’s always the darkest just before the sun rises and it is rising for you. Have a great panto run. If we didn’t live so far away we would come and watch. Have fun and a lovely Christmas with those closest to you.
I just want people to look and know what’s behind the masks we wear, without asking me. To understand, and for me to know they understand. Accept me for me. Flaws and good bits equally. Constantly looking to not feel I will not rise out of this mindset.
I’m honest to others as if to say“you don’t want to know me I’m broken” sadly often they take the advice. Why can’t people see that’s not what I want? I want to feel……something.
Just Be, Sarah. I would miss you if you weren’t and I only know “of” you 😢
There is a light and believe me one day soon it will provide you the inner peace you deserve. Stay strong, no one is judging you and everyone is supporting you through this
We never see the light whilst still surrounded by darkness. We just trust that it is there and that we can find our way out. I am confident that you will find the light that you strive for and I believe that because of the inner strength (which you don’t even realise you have) that you are showing, by sharing this blog, and indeed this struggle, with all of us.
Well done for blogging this, Very inspiring.
Xxx
You inspire me, don’t stop fighting.
Wow I’ve just read your blog and having been on anti d,s for 19 years I can so relate to it. There are so many similarities too I was in a domestic violent relationship x 2, I too had bulimia. I think your honesty is fantastic and it helps raise awareness and stops mental health being such a taboo subject I wish you all the luck in the world you are lucky in the fact you have some good friends it makes a big difference and p.s I love your cats I always say the more I listen to people the more I like my animals take care xx
Don’t give up now, being honest is all part of the healing process, doubt, fear, anguish they are all part of the process of heeling, after years of numbness I can imagine how magnified the feelings must be.. Life is painfully but without darkness you can’t truly appreciate the light. This is where some people turn to an imaginary friend ‘god’
And if that’s what helps hem get through then ok, but that’s just another crutch…
It’s at times like these you need your friends, close friends, people who can handle your honesty and pain and still be there for you..
Keep up the blog, it will help you banish your demons.. And remember there’s no such thing as normal.. Every day is a bonus & there’s always someone worse off than you..
That’s how I cope.. Humour is a mask I wear but it also helps…
Good luck and I await the next instalment
Hi Sarah Jane was just on facebook and wondered why you’d not posted for a few weeks, Now I know.
Having read your struggle I thought I’d try to answer your question as to what is normal.
I’m in a middle ranking management job, non descript, not important, normal. I rescently took part in a course full of other middle ranking nothing people like myself, as normal a bunch as you were likely to find.
The course was residential and 2 weeks long. Living with people for 2 weeks being full on you get to know people in profound ways you’d not normally understand work collegues.
1 underlying fear we all seemed to have was that of “getting found out” We’d all risen through our organisation from areas where we were good(ish) and now were operating as managers, not having done anything to prepare ourselves for this we all lived in fear that someone would find us out, see us thrashing along under the surface trying to keep up with everybody else who makes it look so easy.
I’m sure when you dance the practise you’ve put in over a lifetime of dancing keeps you in control and you can both control and understand what and why you are doing. However normal life isn’t something we practise and we have to cope with what ever comes next all the while trying not to get found out that we don’t really know what we are doing and are making it up as we go along.
So I suppose what I’m trying to say is, normal is, what ever is in your head. We’re all struggling and if we’re all doing it then it must be normal.
Coming off a brain numbing drug is going to magnify the fears of living “normally” (I assume but having never had any I’m not talking from experience here) but please be assured that everybody’s brain is a box of unfiled papers blowing around in the wind of everyday life.
Know that lots of people love you and are routing for you, that must count for something.
Take care hon
Brian
xx
Thank you for your searing honesty and articulating far better than I, the battles many of us fight against ourselves mentally. Everyones battles are truely individual and it’s hard to remember sometimes that others have these internal fights too. Just because someone is incredibly good at what they do, (which you are) doesn’t preclude them from these things.
Keep battling on and thank you once again.
A brave and raw post – thanks so much for sharing it.
I noticed on twitter that you’re vegan – there are some vital nutrients, sadly only present in foods of animal origin, which have a huge impact on human minds and bodies. (I enter into evidence Gillian McKeith on the jungle programme when deprived of her B12 injection for a few days!) You may like to read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith and/or The Meat Fix by John Nicholson – both former vegans – one restored to good health, one less so – not everything is reversible.
This is a genuine effort to help – although I understand that you may respond to the mere suggestion of thinking about diet in the way that I did when my vegetarianism was brought into question!
Very best wishes – Zoe