And then I would feel sadder and sadder, thinking that this is how I felt in my 20s and 30s, and I'd wonder how many other people are feeling this, all the time, and times when I've enjoyed myself, for example, when I taught a class in the fall that was really fun, were there people in it who were desperate? I went through motions, we went to dinner, to a movie, we rode our bikes home, I wrote about this depression, and then in bed I cried and cried and told L all this, and he listened and it wasn't much better but we went to sleep.
And in the morning I was OK. I didn't feel the doubleness. I didn't take the last corticosteroid. I felt a little shaky Saturday but "myself." I could laugh. I could connect with the world. My joints hurt a little, and I took a little acetaminophen. I made myself keep away from the review-in-progress or -in-destruction. I didn't want to read so I picked up Persepolis, the graphic memoir by Marjane Satrapi, to read between meeting with my friend P for lunch and running errands. (Yeah, it's reading, but also has pictures.) I watched some TV, finding myself for the second time this summer watching some show with Dick Van Dyke as a doctor. We rode bikes to dinner with M. We talked about periods of depression. He was impressed that mine went away in a day. But it was still so horrible.
The Taxol caused the weeping. The corticosteroid caused the depression. Next time I'll get help for treating the emotion. I think that's much worse than the pain. But the pain is pain.
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