A couple of months ago I let my children know that they might notice some changes in my demeanour in the coming weeks. I explained that my tele-health doctor had recommended that I cease to take an antidepressant that I had been taking for decades. He told me that I had reached an age at which it would be more likely to harm my constitution than to improve my sense of wellbeing.

Being an obedient woman, I agreed to go along with his advice. In fact, I was glad to get it. I had already, about eight years ago, asked a doctor to take me off it but their response had been to ask, “Do you feel normal when you take it?” My answer was, “Well, yes,” and they advised me, therefore, to keep on taking it.

There is a stupidly long backstory to this medication. A few years after my second child was born I visited my family doctor in mid-winter while wearing a toque pulled down low over my ears and forehead. He noted that I looked depressed and prescribed a medication that has stayed with me all this time. Well, not that medication exactly because the brand was changed once and its potency reduced twice. Regardless, this has been going on since the 1980s. To be fair to that original doctor, though, I may have been depressed, but I put my mood down to the fact that it was winter and/or to an extended post-partum malaise associated with living in a new place where I had very little social interaction.

Anyway, now I find myself wondering if I feel normal or not. I am taking that medication now only once a week, having tapered off from a daily dose, and I don’t like the person I am becoming. I have noticed that I become more anxious in perfectly ordinary situations and small annoyances make me unreasonably tense. For example, I have to talk myself into leaving my apartment to go anywhere. Yesterday, it took me a long time to knock on the door of my new next-door neighbour to welcome her to the building, and I was relieved when no-one answered.

Today I forced myself to drive to get groceries but, when I hesitated in making a left turn, someone honked their horn at me. My heart rate got faster and I was taking deep breaths by the time I got to the parking lot of the store. I was both indignant and panicky at the same time.

A few days ago, a friend was trying to give me directions to a restaurant and I got so overwhelmed I gave up. I couldn’t process the changing information fast enough.

When I was walking around the grocery store today I realized that I was upset by the sound of babies’ cries and unable cheerfully to navigate all the people and carts in the vegetable section. I have always been sensitive to sounds and groups of people, but now that sensitivity seems to have been magnified.

As I ponder all this today I wonder if I just need to give my body more time to readjust to the reduction in medication. Or, perhaps I should talk to a psychologist about the process I am going through or even about life in general. I don’t know. I only know that I don’t much like the person I am becoming. I thought I needed to warn my children, but someone should have warned me.