It’s the Decongestant, Y’all

Greetings everyone. I’d like to confess that I’ve just surfaced from my own personal Requiem for a Dream / Trainspotting experience which was caused by an innocent attempt to alleviate severe fall allergies. I took a daily cocktail of Claritin-D and Nasacort for two beautiful, yet nightmarish, weeks. I’d like to share what happened.

My eyes quit watering. My nose quit running. My throat quit scratching. And the crushing headache went away. Those were the pros.

The cons were:

1) My head felt ginormous, like it was this huge balloon that kind of dragged the rest of my body around all day. This was disconcerting to say the least.

2) I lost interest in all people and activities and went through my day like a zombie, doing the absolute least I could do to get by.

3) I discovered I had no need to say anything, ever to anyone. Silence was so much easier, there in my bubble-wrapped cocoon.

4) Captain Crunch sounded like a reasonable dinner for my kids. Every single night.

Also, I never ate anything. Never wanted to. And I had nightmares about the people I loved hating me. I woke up traumatized and spent the rest of the day telling myself it couldn’t be true. The fourteen days of allergy meds ended with me wandering around town in morose silence, musing on such things as: if ISIS and Ebola and American Horror Story: Freak Show actually exist, what am I even trying for anyway? I almost blogged during this dark time as well. (Potential topics considered: “Being a Parent Will Rip Your Heart Out”, “Dreams are Stupid and They Never Come True” and “Why?”)

So. You’re welcome.

The other night at the dinner table (where I had actually forced myself to make and serve some pathetic meal) I had an epiphany. “I didn’t feel this way when I took the regular Claritin,” I announced. “It’s the decongestant that’s killing me. It’s the D, y’all! The D is what’s killing me!” Needless to say, both my teenage sons ADORED THIS and dissolved into laughter and it took me at least ten minutes to understand what the heck was so funny. At which point, I told them both to shut up, because being a parent is hard and will rip your heart out.

Now happily, I’m back to my normal self, the proof of which being I got in a fight today with the manager of the pop-up Halloween store because she said she wouldn’t exchange a wrong sized costume that my son had bought the day before. Last week if she’d said this to me, I would have stared at her blankly – exhausted, depressed and medicine-headed – and probably said something like, “Gllluuuurrrrbbbbb…..”

Not today. Today, my friends, I was full of self-righteous indignation and eloquence and misplaced vim and vigor and gave her 21-year-old-self an earful of how I wasn’t going to be lectured when it clearly says on the receipt EXCHANGE FOR SIZE ONLY.

She was like, “Whatever. Go get the right size.” So then I stormed off and tripped over the haunted house display.

I’m back, y’all.