When I got home from work tonight, I had a lovely time catching up with an old friend of mine through texts. We’ve known each other for fourteen years and we still greet each other for our birthdays and give each other major life updates when we converse. We were talking about me visiting him next summer, which made me think of how I am working on approaching life very differently since I quit my anti-depression medication. I thought it had only been a month since I stopped, but it’s actually been longer and I wanted to take the time to reflect on this big life-changing step that I’ve taken.
About two months ago, I spontaneously (read: stupidly) decided to stop taking my depression medication. Earlier this year, I had considered talking to my psychiatrist about stopping/tapering off my meds and when I noticed I hadn't taken my meds for 2-3 days in a row, my dumb ass thought "Oh wow. I forgot to take my meds for several days in a row and... I’m okay. Maybe I don’t need them after all.” So right then, I decided I was just going to quit cold turkey.
If you know anything about being on anti-depression medication for a long time, you know that this was a very stupid idea. Taking medications like this for a number of years means your body has gotten used to these chemicals being pumped into your brain and suddenly not having it, like any drug one takes continuously, causes your body to freak out. Some people would say you’re not really experiencing withdrawal when this happens--instead they call it “discontinuation syndrome”. But in reality, it was basically withdrawal for me.
I had been taking this one particular medication, Lexapro, for almost five years. I was very lucky in that it worked well for me--I never had any serious side effects, my dose was pretty steady with only two changes (the first one to up the dose by a bit when I was having a particularly rough time, the second one lowering it back to my regular dose), and it never had dangerous interaction possibilities with other medications that I took short term. Really, the worst experience I had with Lexapro was coming off it.
After about five days, I started experiencing a myriad of symptoms such as nausea, constipation, weakness, light-headedness, and basically feeling like shit overall. But the worst part of it, for me, was the constant headaches. For two weeks straight, I had what seemed to be a never ending headache. And I felt terrible the whole time. I refused to go out of the house if I could help it. When I wasn’t at work, I was in my house. I was worried that it would never end.
Thankfully, it did. After the first two weeks, the symptoms were mostly alleviated. By the time a month had rolled by, I was completely back to normal. And that was when I ended up seeing my psychiatrist (lol). To be safe, I am seeing him in January just to make sure I’ll be okay and then I won’t have a psychiatrist any more... Which is weird to me because being on meds was something I thought I’d have to be for the rest of my life.
But one of the reasons why I wanted to quit in the first place was that I don’t want to be on meds for the rest of my life. I already have to be on testosterone for the rest of my life (unless for some reason in the future I have to stop) which I don’t mind, but having to rely on other chemicals so that my brain can function? I don’t know. I don’t like that.
I still have a bad mental health day every so often, but fortunately, it hasn’t been awful. Like, I’ve definitely felt worse while I was medicated. But that’s probably because my depression was really bad back then. I am able to talk myself through my feelings now and get support when I need it. But also, just letting myself feel shitty even if it is hard and feels gross. I just have to remember to take it one day at a time.
In the future, I might choose to go back on my meds. But for now, I’d like to try living my adult life not depending on manufactured chemicals for my mood. There’s nothing wrong with needing/wanting to be on meds, but I think I’d like to try and live my life freely and independently for as long as I can.
Tomorrow will mark three months since I first started working in the DC Public Library system. It’s definitely been a good job for me--it’s relatively low stress, it’s not really physically demanding, I know I won’t get fired for being a queer trans man, I get along well with my coworkers and I get paid well for what I do. I’ve talked before about working in a public library and I’d like to expand on some of the things I talked about on there.
I want to talk about how there is such a thing as a computer literacy gap. It’s 2019, almost 2020, really. In the age of smartphones and tablets, you’d think that everyone and their mother would know how to navigate a computer. After all, a smartphone is really just a very small and much more portable computer device. But tell me why I regularly have to show patrons how to print something from a computer. Tell me why there are people that don’t know what Microsoft Word is. Tell me why I just had a man a few minutes ago ask me, word-for-word: “How do I type the Roman Numerals onto my resume?”.
To me, it all boils down to poverty. Sure, computers may be a lot cheaper and relatively more accessible now than they were, say, 30 years ago. But let’s face it, there are other things that are not getting cheaper as the years go by: housing expenses, healthcare, food and transportation (regardless of it’s gas or a public transit card) just being a few of these things. I have had patrons straight up tell me: “I don’t have a computer at home” and I don’t blame them. These things are costly--and why pay for one when you can just go to the public library to use them for free? A lot of our patrons have smartphones, but because they don’t have a computer at home and don’t use them often, they don’t know how to do things like log into their email account (I wish I was kidding, I’ve had people type their email address straight into the URL bar, instead of actually going onto their email’s domain first and logging in from there) or how to download a file from their email.
Now I’m not a sociologist or anything like that--I majored in Psychology in college, but my focus back then was on developmental and “abnormal” psychology. But my guess is that for our impoverished patrons, living in poverty has gotten them used to thinking that they can’t do anything and that they will always need the help of somebody else. I see this all the time at work. I try to teach an individual how to do something, but this person will never try it for themselves. They’ll say “Oh, I want you to do it” as if they don’t trust themselves to do something as simple as type in their library card number. After dealing with this multiple times a day, everyday, it gets really old really fast. It leaves me and my coworkers frustrated. People should feel empowered when they use technology, but I feel like for our patrons who struggle with it, they end up feeling stupid.
While DCPL does offer free computer classes for the community, it’s not in all locations just because of the way certain locations are set up. For example, my location is relatively small and doesn’t have a computer lab--all of our computers are in an open space and there’s no classroom/individual rooms either. This makes it hard when a lot of my location’s patrons could really benefit from going to a basic computer class.
At the end of the day, it makes me really sad that there are grown adults who come into my location and literally don’t know what to do. They want to move onto a better life by starting to make resumes, but it’s clear nobody taught them how. There was a man who had been in the library for over two hours and the most work he had done on his resume was his basic info and where he went to high school. That was all he had done. In two hours.
It’s always humbling and really eye-opening when I realize that even just knowing websites and what those websites do is something I take for granted. For example, a woman didn’t know that there are websites that one can go to to convert PDFs to Word documents for free and I showed her one to convert her bill from PDF to Word. She gasped in awe “HOW DID YOU DO THAT?” when we opened up the Word document. It is really mind-blowing.
I’ll end with this: I used to work in a Kindergarten classroom in a school with very limited resources. I remember during the first couple of weeks, my students had to be tested on their literacy and math skills. It frustrated me to no end that my barely five-year-old students were doing testing on computers. I remember thinking to myself “They barely have the motor skills for that!” and “It’s not like they have computers at home!”. But now, after seeing and working with adults who need help on the most basic computer tasks, I have hope that my old students will not end up with the struggles that their elders have. I have hope that by the time my students are in their 30s and 40s and applying for a job, they will know how to build their resumes, they will be able to use a computer comfortably and not feel stupid when they have to use it. But most of all, I hope that by the time my old students are at that age, computers will be much more accessible to everyone instead of being another hurdle that already disenfranchised people have to jump through.
Last week, I had two events where I came out at work. In honor of National Coming Out Day, I’d like to share it all with you.
The first one was subtle. My partner (who is a transmasc nonbinary person) surprised me at work on Tuesday night and one of the kids saw me kiss them on the cheek. The kid was in shock and kept asking "Is that your girlfriend? Is that your girlfriend?" and I laughed and said "No. He's my friend." to which the kid literally had her jaw drop and was like "That's a boy??" and I was like "Yep. I just blew your mind, didn't I?" and she said "Yes, you did."
The next day was not quite as subtle. In fact, it was the opposite. A contractor at work referenced a problematic Dave Chapelle joke about trans women and having their genitals removed and remarked that he would want to die if his dick got cut off. After another coworker noticed how I was not reacting to these comments, I mentioned "If I told you guys what I'm thinking, y'all would be shocked". Another coworker encouraged me: "Well, we're listening!". I decided to go for it and dropped the mic: "I don't have a dick. I'm transgender."
The contractor never let out another word about trans people after I mentioned that.
As of late, I've been having a hard time lately with existential dread. I’m used to working jobs that exhaust me to the point where I don’t have much energy to do much of anything when I get home. My current job is just a lot of sitting down and I have a lot of time to reflect on where I am, what I’m doing and what I think I should be doing next. I also recently stopped taking my antidepressants because I want to try and live more freely. It's been hard to adjust to a life where I have a lot of free time but feeling like my heart's not set on much.
But after these two events, I'm reminded that my heart is set on this: to let people know that queer and trans people exist. To make people mindful of the things that they say. To show people that queer and trans people are everywhere and there's nothing wrong with us. We're human beings. We love, we fight, we laugh, and we do everything that cis hetero people do and a lot of the times we do a lot more than they do just to survive.
Coming out is a hard thing to do, even if someone is already out to family and friends. Coming out isn’t something that is done once--whenever I meet someone new, I have to gauge if this person is safe for me. The second they say something that makes me feel uncomfortable (just like with that contractor), I want to come out and prove to this person that there’s nothing wrong with a queer and trans person. I’m very fortunate that I’m not in my early transition days any more--coming out as trans or queer doesn’t get me weird looks or rude questions. People just accept me as I am and think nothing of it.
I come out for the people that can’t. I come out for the people that don’t want to. I come out because I can.
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine from high school posted this on their Facebook. I started working in the DC Public Library system a couple of months ago and when I saw this post, I responded with a mini-essay about what it actually means to work at a public library. I know that the post is well-intentioned, but there is a lot that happens in a public library that most people are unaware of.
Below is my response:
I work in a public library system and the days that my branch are open late, most people are out of there by 8-8:30 (we close at 9).
I've seen adults who come to the library who are there to do work--either applying for jobs or doing things like sending/making copies of bills or important legal documents. There are also adults who don't have regular computer access, so they use the library as a free Internet cafe and don't want to interact with others when they're on the computer.
All this to say that I think it's not just a matter of if libraries are open late; it's a matter of gauging what people are interested in. And from what I've seen (in the few branches that I've worked at, at least) most adults are just there to hang out on a computer, read the newspaper if they can't afford it, charge their phone or do work.
A lot of adult programming that I've seen at my system are aimed towards helping people with their computer skills (it's really sad how rampant computer illiteracy in this age can be!), job searching, or resources for homeless people. I know one location does a Queer Book Club, but they're in an area with a significantly less impoverished (which means more literate and more educated) population. They can do that. My location can't.
On another note, there are also people who are legitimately against reading. They think of the library and think that it's all just about books, even though it's really more than that. At an outreach event someone told me "I don't ever touch books. You'll never get me to touch a book" and I was like "???". Like, what's wrong about reading? It's not a bad thing to be literate? But then, I have to think about how some adults in this city read at an elementary school level and don't want to embarrass themselves by admitting that to themselves, let alone another person.
I'm sorry I have so many feelings. I'm just trying to say it's not that simple. Working in a public library system is easy in terms of physical labor, but thinking about how do I interact with patrons, what they're dealing with, where they're coming from and ultimately what they bring to each visit can be a lot.
Last thing: Last week, a patron who is infamous in my branch lost his shit after I told him he was barred (earlier that morning he was being disrespectful to one of my coworkers, as per usual). He was like "Are you an American citizen?? NO, YOU'RE NOT." I'm the only Asian staff member in my branch and as someone whose immigration/citizenship status has been a very sensitive issue for me for the longest time, that got me a little shaken up. It was just unnecessary and rude. But shit like that (or worse) happens in a public library all the time. Anyone is welcome, sure, which unfortunately means people who are nasty can come, too, and we as public library staff have to constantly deal with both trying to do things for the community that we serve but also getting shit from the same community.
Now, it’s not always bad working in the library. One night, I had the pleasure to help a little girl find some graphic novels that she was really interested in taking home to read. It made me really happy that her father was supportive of his daughter’s eagerness to read. I’ve also had the pleasure of helping a couple print out paperwork relating to their new home.
There’s so much that we take for granted in this digital age like printing or being able to use our computer. This job has its challenges, but it sure is rewarding to see people be so grateful because I did the simplest thing to help them get change in their life.
This is my first time doing a solid attempt at serious text-focused blogging in years. This project is meant to be not just a personal outlet on my thoughts and feelings about anything and everything that comes to mind, but also a way to spread awareness on topics that people still need educating on. I’m an LGBTQ immigrant person of color who struggles with mental illness. I will inevitably talk about how these aspects of my identity affect my life.
I know many of you who are reading this now have met me in-person and know me to some capacity, but if you do not know me, I implore you to read my posts with an open mind. If I have written something you do not agree with, let’s engage in discourse! Tell me what you think. I’d like to hear what people have to say in response to what I write.
Thanks for joining me in this journey and I hope you will be entertained and learn something new. :)
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