Dear Rachel

There is no time for pleasantries, let’s get to it.

You will fight a good fight from a place of absolute terror. You will list improbable reasons why you might be the person for whom antidepressants just really aren't the solution. You will throw pseudoscience and bad journalism against a woman with twenty years’ experience and a prescription pad. And then you will give in.

You will use the phrase “I am not a beautiful and unique snowflake”, only semi-ironically, whilst still hoping that you are in fact a beautiful and unique snowflake.

Sertraline. 100mg. Daily. You will build up to this in infinitesimally small increments. You will learn a pill can be cut into quarters. You will be terrified of putting your trust in your psychiatrist because you really don’t trust anyone. You won’t trust yourself. You will question if it is doing anything. It is.

Your therapist will say that some people “actually find it kind of beautiful”. And you will have an imaginary discussion with her, as you brush your teeth one morning, and explain between spitting that beautiful is not the word that you would use. But that, more accurately, it is a kind of calmness. You will argue your brain will still move a million miles an hour, but it isn’t all gray. You dream in colour now. You dream. You can write again.

You will obviously not tell her this in person, because you never seem to get the words out when it matters. You want to thank her for the world, but she only ever sees you at stupid.

Sertraline. A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, an SSRI. Yours is made by Pfizer. They call it Zoloft. You don’t have a nickname for it yet. It feels familiar enough to need one.

The side effects are intolerable. Until the effects are divine. And then the dry mouth and the sexual disfunction and the sweats and the other unspeakable things will melt away. And you will think, rationally, because for the first time in a long time you can think rationally. And you can write.

And so you stay up late, one night, writing this and not self-editing.

Depression is self-editing. Depression is second guessing. Depression is a wet blanket on a cold morning - you are pretty sure you would feel better without it but you’re not sure you can take the chance. But, for the first time in a long time you are not depressed.

And so you write. Your wife goes to bed in another room, and you write. And your children sleep on in another room, and you write. And your hands hurt and cramp and, instead of segueing into a complex spiral of fear and self-doubt and worries of carpal tunnel syndrome that may almost certainty be cancerous, you write.

And you don’t know what this is or where it is going, and yet you write.

And you promise you won’t delete and start again in the morning. Because something needs to be said, and there is poetry in the purge.

You will. I promise. You will.

From you, in six months time. 

-Rachel Schnellinger-Bailey

Rachel Schnellinger-Bailey is a British writer. Her work has appeared in various publications, most recently Queer Runnings (Queer Runnings Press, 2022) and Margin Release (Loose Dog Press, 2022). She lives in Switzerland with her wife and their children.