For the last two months I have been taking Lexapro as a last attempt to sooth my middle of the night terror episodes that often precede the beginnings of rolling and raging vertigo attacks that last for hours, which often string on for weeks with no warning of their beginnings or end. I have never taken a medication that is meant to realign my brain firings. After migraine medications, chewable Melatonin was the hardest drug I kept in my medicine cabinet. Taking a medication to help control my anxiety, caused by the unknowable arrival of nocturnal vertigo attacks, triggered by my Meniere’s disease-ravaged left inner ear, is all new for me. I am noticing how the medication works in a quiet, almost imperceptible way. I feel the same. I look the same. No aches, rashes, nausea, or suicidal thoughts – quite the opposite. Now I have fewer thoughts. I just don’t think about things and it’s weird and I am not sure who this quiet person in my brain is. She is kind of boring. She laughs at things that are remedial and trite. She doesn’t stress at all after she stuffs her face with 10 pieces of strawberry licorice and then three handfuls of barbecue Kettle chips. She doesn’t even care to weigh herself to see if the medication has changed her weight, up or down. Nothing bothers her really and that is very uncharacteristic of this chick. My new blasé demeanor might be sold in a white can with the words Franchon Lite written in Comic Sans. The me I have always spoken to in front of the water cooler of my psyche is somewhere else. She is on sabbatical in a place with crackling cell service and creaking bed frames. I don’t know if I would socialize with this new version of me outside of work. But on the other hand, I have noticed that the medication might be what has stopped the loop of vertigo attacks I was stuck in for three months followed by a never experienced before 31 days of constant dizziness. Coincidence? I don’t know. I do know that I am happy to be feeling good again and doing normal things like driving without feeling like there’s Vaseline rimming the inside of my sunglasses, getting groceries without a chaperone and going out with friends without first targeting the nearest exit in case I need to run out to steady myself against a dark wall at the first sign of inner tilt. I believe the 5mg of Lexapro I have been taking daily might have demurely severed my state of near complete homebound excitement that I lived in from December to the fourth day of March. For now, I have my life and normal high-energy mobility back, but I have also lost something that is a huge part of me. My interest in my surroundings has waned. I am not sparked by the everyday occurrences that have always thrilled and entertained me, sometimes so much so that I am forced to write about it. I feel like I am an AI version of myself. I am me, but my internal volume have been turned down to 5. Maybe a 6 on the rare occasions that I am enjoying a few tart palomas, or a crisp Sauvignon Blanc. I can’t even drink my beloved red wine anymore, rose is even risky. Nitrates, a verboten potential vertigo trigger for Meniere’s-addled folks, cannot be enjoyed anymore without severe risk of putting myself down to the perfect position to inspect the intricacies of the wood grain in my bathroom floor.

I have also lost my desire to write. I am forcing myself to do so now. Maybe it will all come back to me soon. I hope so. Maybe I am just making excuses for myself. This could be just as likely. But I am not feeling very creative. I have been reading a lot of horror novels, which I haven’t done since I was a teenager. I have a thicker skin. I am less squeamish. The small things that always struck me as endearing, charming or unbearable in their sadness, do not move me as deeply now. The constant inner worrying for my children’s safety and happiness, less acute. The high-alert personality that must miss nothing happening in any room, now shrugs. Maybe I really don’t need to carry those constant genetically implanted personality traits. Maybe my brain can and should idle in neutral on occasion. It feels weird as I let the Lexapro gently guide me away from the loops of tilt and roll attacks I’ve come to expect since 2021. But which is a better? A soft-boiled version of myself that is not always sick, or languishing in bed, or one that is a bit slower, who looks gin-eyed at the former annoyances that drove me to overthinking about everything? I am hoping to find a happy medium version of my new Lexapro-taking self. One day, I hope to feel a little bit of road rage rising after passing a snaily Prius on the 405, then I will know I am still all me inside. I will gather speed as I approach the Lexapro detour sign, passing it on a hard right, then flipping it off in my rearview mirror, an empty plastic bag beside me, just in case I forget to take my medication for one, three or seven days and suddenly find myself in the throes of an another vertigo attack. I will pull over and wait for the Vaseline fog to fade from my peripheral vision and then when I am ready, I will keep driving through the haze straight toward the glow of a perfectly flat and untilting horizon. I will sing along to some sappy 70s song that I have always loved precisely because it’s sappy. I will slap that ad-hoc puke bag from the seat to the floor because I will not be vomiting, nor spinning, nor tilting, not today and not tomorrow.