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Perfectly Imperfect Lee Woodruff, Random House (page 3 of 8) Page 3 of 8

“I need more than armor,” I told her glumly. “I need an armed personnel carrier.” Her suggestion sounded like a nice little euphemism for popping some mood- altering pills. For months I had resisted the idea of an antidepressant, believing that I could find my own equilibrium. Yet something in what she said struck a chord for me. Here I was in a doctor’s office sobbing, terrified — I didn’t sound so levelheaded at all. And here was a wise woman I respected giving me a practical solution for how to take care of myself, one that didn’t require siphoning resources from anyone who needed me. Finally, at that moment, it seemed like a sound rationale. Maybe it was time to seriously consider medication. I was in emotional pain, as one doctor would explain to me months later. And emotional pain is just as real and uncomfortable as the physical kind.

So I agreed to try an antidepressant, since if nothing else it would allow me more peace at night, more sleep, relief from the now-familiar anxiety attacks that seemed to find me as regularly as a Swiss watch.

As it turned out, the Paxil was actually a help. It didn’t make me feel like a rodeo clown, or like skipping across four lanes of traffic in a convertible. I didn’t have to suppress the desire to sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the top of my lungs in the shower.

It just made me feel, at last, like me. It resuscitated the old Lee. It created a trampoline under my free fall, a barrier that allowed me to stop myself when I became anxious so that I did not go any lower. It was all very subtle, but over time I began to notice that the fear was more muted and my ability to feel some joy was restored. The anxiety had been driven back down into a containable place where I could talk and reason with myself, using my inner voice. In short, the medication had allowed me to recognize the emerging outlines of the old me.

That prescription eased me through Bob’s operation — which was successful — and beyond. And as Bob healed and returned more and more to himself, so did I, although I didn’t spend time thinking about the medication.

“Are you still taking those pills?” Bob would ask me periodically, months after that last big surgery, when he was back at work and life seemed finally to be moving in a fairly straight line, with only occasional kinks of uncertainty on my part.

“Yup,” I’d answer.

“Why?” he’d respond quizzically. “Aren’t we all doing well?” And we were. But if Bob had any little setback — a tired day, a confused moment — if there was any tiny wrinkle that only the expert eye of a wife would see (and I saw everything), it might throw me.

I wanted to take the antidepressants a little longer, I told him. I’d know when it was time to stop, I said. But the truth was, I still wasn’t sure. What if now I needed the medication in order to be “my old self”?

I didn’t like the idea of taking these pills indefinitely. Not only did they make me sleep a lot more, but I wanted to see what I would be like now that life had calmed down. I wanted to kick out the crutch and see what Lee looked like in the aftermath of a crisis. It would be Lee raw, Lee without the lift.

Could I still have a bad day and then simply recover? Would I be able to go to bed and tell myself that tomorrow would be an improvement — and then really make it better? I wanted to know.

In the past, I had always had the power to talk myself out of a funk, the way I would buck up other people. I reasoned with myself through bad times and focused on the fact that often good things really were just around the corner, like the moment of peace and light on the couch that one morning, or the hopeful interpretation of the broken ring. I had once had a fairly dependable ability to almost will myself happier by focusing on the small acts that lifted my spirits: an outing to the movies with a friend, a brisk walk down by the nature sanctuary in our town, spoonfuls of raw cookie dough. Would I still be able to do that in the aftermath of a crisis, would I still be able to glimpse a little light at the end of every tunnel? Or had the process deformed and mutated me? How could I tell?

And so one day I simply stopped. I didn’t say anything to anybody, but I just stopped taking the pills. I didn’t flush them down the toilet or do anything dramatic. I just stopped. In hindsight, I probably should have consulted my doctor first, but I felt certain I knew best what my body and mind needed.

So far, so good, I decided after a while.

Of course I had days here and there where I was down, but they were usually followed by days where I was relatively happy again. I found joy in a cobalt- blue sky, in going for a swim or a walk with a girlfriend. In short, my motor still worked. I still controlled the gearshift, and I still knew how to pull myself out of a tailspin. This was good. This was better than good.

And when a lowish day came by, or something seemed difficult, I talked to myself. I felt for the trampoline floor with my toes, and it was still there. It was not artificial; it had not been medication- induced. I had wanted to know that not only could we survive a crisis but that my former set point for happiness could rebound too. And for the most part, it had.

In my life, what the big miracle of Bob’s recovery did more than anything was to widen the aperture inside of me to witness the presence of small everyday blessings. The big moments are easy to spot. But the real challenge, the art form, is to find gratitude in much simpler things. We need to be open to feeling the power of a life made up of many little shards of white- light experiences. These moments of grace, as I think of them, are as real and as powerful as the headliners. They help us to throttle up, to rescue ourselves from a nosedive, as surely as those little white pills did for a while for me.

Excerpted from Perfectly Imperfect by Lee Woodruff Copyright © 2009 by Lee Woodruff. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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