I’ve Been Closing Tabs

I’ve been closing tabs recently. My phone is always sitting at the maximum number of tabs (it’s 500 in Safari btw — when you open a new one, another tab randomly closes. No clue about Brave, my preferred browser, though. It doesn’t tell me and I don’t mind that.) and my laptop is typically full of tabs that I’m scared to close so they serve as a reminder that I eventually have to come back to that task.

I’ve been closing tabs though. I’ve been finishing things, like a lot, and not needing their tabs anymore. I’ve been reading books digitally and annotating them and finishing chapters and saving the file and closing the tabs. I’ve been finishing scripts and recording them and closing that tab and the thesaurus tab and the transcript tab and the fact checking tab and all the other ones. I finish my game of Tetris and close the tab so I don’t find the tab open and start playing again without thinking about it later. I close the Brightspace tab when I’m not doing work and come back to it later, even if I have to log in again and reopen pages and whatever. I bookmark tabs and come back to them and delete the bookmarks if they’re no longer relevant.

I often close a tab and expect the others behind it to pop up and there’s just. No other tabs. My screen goes blank, I swipe up with 3 fingers to see what’s hiding in the other desktops and there’s just. Nothing.

I switched medication a few weeks ago. I started taking Sertraline (aka Zoloft, aka my alter ego Sir Traline the Drag, who I’m not sure can exist now that the Sertraline is fully out of my system) my first semester freshman year. I reached the max dosage and stayed on that for awhile. I never felt anything really. I never trust my feelings because if I lose interest in someone I assume it’s just my disorder or meds or something and I’ll come back around eventually. I’ve gotten myself in shitty situations doing that.

Whenever I felt anything strongly I’d cling to that, whether it was joy or sadness or anger - I like how anger feels the most I think. It’s rare but it’s different from the usual fatigue and flatness. I wouldn’t cling strongly to anxiety though, I hate anxiety and avoid it in every possible way. I am in a constant state of escapism thanks to my collection of anxiety disorders that I’m scared will get me. I absolutely never sit alone with my thoughts because I immediately start catastrophizing or seeing horrific images behind my eyelids. I fall asleep to the sound of Something, never just with my thoughts, absolutely never. Whenever I try it goes horribly wrong. I either put on a sleep meditation (usually almost always Jason Stephenson) or find a particularly long, droning tiktok and set my phone to turn off in 30 minutes. I fall asleep within 5, probably 1 or 2, but I am absolutely terrified of what will happen if it takes longer than that and I’ll be back to the awful awful thoughts. I think the only time I’m alone with my thoughts is in the shower and while I’m journaling or writing. Then I usually have a direction that keeps my thoughts away from the ones that send me into a panic. I don’t know why I don’t just do that other times.

After the Sertraline I had Hydroxyzine added to the mix. I take it as needed, usually a half tablet because a full tablet will make me too sleepy. So will the half tablet, but I’m always kinda sleepy. I just don’t take it when I’m driving or have a deadline or something just in case. I don’t take it often. Usually if I’m in a genuine panic. The few times I’ve taken it have been related to my mom and/or schoolwork. I was taking it a lot for the classes I needed for my computer science minor and then I realized that was for sure a bad thing so I dropped that minor. I sometimes store those pills in a plastic hamster, although he’s kinda bulbous and also breaks when your friends start playing with him and don’t realize he’s full of halved pills. He eventually became an ornament in our tiny Christmas tree named Gimmel, after the dreidel side.

Then I was put on Bupropion, or Wellbutrin. I fight with her often because I have to take her with food in the morning. I do not like eating before leaving the house, but mostly waking up on time to eat before leaving the house. She made me late for the majority of my 11:40 classes last semester which single handedly gave me a D- in that class. I had to take a full Hydroxyzine tablet because of that. But it’s okay because Will Wood has a song about taking Bupropion so like. I don’t know. When I said I wanted to go off of it my psychiatrist upped the dosage and lowered my Sertraline dosage. We’re at a bit of a standstill and I’m hating her less (Bupropion, not my psychiatrist. I don’t hate my psychiatrist).

Mostly because I’m now on Desvenlafaxine, or Prestiq, as of two weeks ago. I also have to take that with food in the morning, so I’ve resigned myself to being a breakfast before class meds person. I Guess. I’m no longer on Sertraline, but the other meds stayed. But I think it’s working. We’re three weeks in and I’m fully caught up on all of my classes — I even had a professor compliment how well I’m doing with staying on top of things and working ahead and putting in a lot of effort. This has not happened since 2019.

I… yeah I need a second.

Um.

So. I’m not sure if it’s entirely the medication or if it’s also in part due to how I scheduled this semester. The classes I need to graduate at the end of the semester all lined up to be Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. I intentionally picked no electives on my four day weekend (okay I gave in and added a 3 hour elective on Mondays that has no homework but that’s okay because it gets me in the school mindset late in the afternoon on Monday so I can sleep in and brace myself for the coming week) so I have time over the weekend to breathe, and intentionally give myself full days of nothing. I call them goop days. If I let myself have a limited-depression day, I can recover before I am forced to die for a week and have non-planned goop days. I am very good at making breaks into non-breaks, whether I work through them or stress about not working, so by setting time that I am Not Going To Work is very important to actually rest. I also let myself not do any work after class once a (3 day) week. This keeps me sane.

I usually don’t let myself close the productivity tabs and just keep them open in my head and don’t allow myself to open fun or relaxation tabs until they’re done. I just get overwhelmed and do nothing. Then I don’t close tabs and just add more eventually. I’m making sure I close those productivity tabs now and open ones that make me feel like a person.