It has come to my attention, recently, that I am a lot happier than I have been for quite some time. I wrote that sentence in November in 2021, and now I finish it in November 2024. So much happier, so, in fact, that this month marks the ending (the beginning?) of a decade-long dependence as I start to titrate down from 100mg to nothing, from a daily doctrine of pills (oops, haven’t taken my pill yet!) to nothing but my lifestyle – good old fashioned exercise endorphin boost, eating healthily, socialising (but still sometimes feeling lonely) with a great work-life balance and new (yet old) interests and bolstered self-confidence, as I stop taking the anti-depressants that I’ve needed since I was fourteen, fifteen. I’m 27 now.

I often wonder who I will be, what I will be like, when it filters out my system. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been taking them properly for years now. Days without, weeks without until the horrible dizziness and light-headedness and heart palpitations kick in, and I start taking them religiously again, feeding my fake little Finch app bird one pet a day at a time (His name is Rex), but as I’ve regulated taking them less and less the withdrawals have withdrawn and I no longer get symptoms when it’s been a week, eight days, nine days since my last dose, which is why I decided it was time to get off the meds, even though it always sticks in my mind that one scene from it’s kind of a funny story, where he feels fine and wants to get off, but he only feels fine because they’re doing their job. For me, their job is done (at least I hope).

But that’s not the point of this writing, to talk of my worries of ending my addiction (in physiological terms, only) with Sertraline, but to explore all of the reasons why I am feeling so much more content as I creep closer and closer to thirty than I will ever been again to eighteen, nineteen, twenty-five.

I often wonder what will be, when I look back in old age, the best years of my life. Will it be when I was a child, the years I don’t really remember except some stand-out memories like my dad getting me a digital camera for one Christmas, when we got our first dog, when my mum took me for my first horse riding lesson, when my best friend told me her parents didn’t like me. Or will it my pre-teen and teen years, where I very much remember the years, but for all the bad reasons – loneliness, angst, loosing friends, becoming more and more introverted and cherishing online escapes like roleplaying on Piczo, blogging on Tumblr, writing fanfiction on fanfic.net and LiveJournal. Playing Farmville and Spider Solitaire and poking guys (and girls) I had crushes on and spending days in the fields with the horses just reading, poo picking, occasionally riding. Seeing my cousin once every two weekends and going on long, long walks in the dead of night, to the play park and jumping off swings, or sleeping in a tent our little nan’s garden and filming silly little YouTube videos. Or will it be those late teen years, when I moved away from home for the first time and experienced love and loss and good relationships and bad friendships, found my feet and who I was only for me to question it every other day, some days so bad I was forced into therapy and should have visited A&E that one time but still wear the physical scars and overcame the mental ones, but still come out on top because hey, that’s life. Or will it be my pandemic-fuelled early-20s, when life stood still but actually, for me, life was slowly slowly beginning it’s slow upward trajectory as I (for once) grew close with my family and started a career and took a leap by telling a boy I met online that I liked him? I think the answer will be an amalgamation of all those years; of all those key milestones that have shaped me in whatever which way, but I still think; which will stand out more? Which will I remember?

Realistically, I think it will be the midst of the pandemic and the post-pandemic life I built for myself. For all the reasons that was an abhorrent chapter of British (and world) history, from lack of education and resources and, of course, Party Gate and Specsavers, it was an incredibly easy time for me and a time that allowed me to fully immerse myself into things that I had once so frivolously enjoyed, enjoy again – because it’s true, what they say, that your thirties are a time to enjoy unabashedly the things that brought you joy a a child and admit, once again that they bring you joy without feeling the shame or the “you still like that?” because, yes I do, I do still enjoy reading (and writing) fanfiction, and spending my time roleplaying (translated, from Twilight OCs, to D&D once a week in my office and occasionally, once a month ((still in my office)), and playing Pokémon GO and watching silly little cartoons like Bob’s Burgers and Spongebob Squarepants and Batman, reading comics and graphic novels and even mangas.

And all of a sudden, in my (re)discovery of these enjoyments, ideas and notions are floating their way back to me, re-awakening in my mind long forgotten peculiars of characters, lyrics I haven’t heard in a decade that are bringing me back to life. I am seeing Kids in Glass Houses, a band that I was obsessed with when I was thirteen/fourteen/fifteen, who’s lyrics were in my MSN bio and cut out in shitty bubble lettering and blue tacked to my wall /// Wrestle with the questions in your head, they interrupt your sleep and fill your bed // thinking is the best truly yet to come? and I am more excited than I have been in some time.

I spend my days, now, closer to thirty than I ever will be again to eighteen, nineteen, twenty-five, like I have spent many before – playing Pokémon, playing League of Legends and counting down the days to season two of Arcane, obsessing (light heartedly, in the way you do over a show, a book, a film) over the BatFam and their ever evolving complex relationships (all fictional, of course), rewatching again and again TV shows that brought incomparable joy over weeks, months, years (Parks and Rec, The Office, NCIS, New Girl, Brooklyn Nine Nine, and so many more) and noticing brand new nuances every single time, a shot or a scene that had never imprinted in my memory the last time, or the time before. Listening to wildly infuriating feministic lyrical ballads, not just Paris Paloma but Kiki Rockwell, too – yet reading fiction that seems to absolutely counteract this as I devour words upon words of cheesy romance (which is, by default, singularly hypnotised into the trope of heterosexuality).

But now I have the added benefit of hindsight, and foresight, and the knowledge of the trajectory I’m willing my life and career to take here in the deep South (of the UK). And not least of all the maturation and the comfort in knowing who I am (for the time being) and who I want to be, and the recognition that if these things bring me joy (and they do) and they’re not hurting any body else (they’re not) then no one has the ability to shame me for my likes, my dislikes, not even my parents. The solidarity in the few friends that I have, that I have maintained solid and defining relationships with for (in some cases) longer than I have been in this symbiotic relationship with medication, and in others, half as long yet twice as fierce, celebrating our own unique interests. And evolution, too, in finding new passions (I cycle, now) and interests (I love cooking new recipes, (but not the clean-up – so sorry, my love)) and realising that it’s okay to do things alone (concerts, plays, talks) and go places alone (Belfast, Cherbourg too perhaps) with the security that (whilst you did not wish to experience them), you do want to hear about my experience, of them.

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inspired to share some unabridged yapping by an old friend who’s also doing some unabridged yapping.