It's been two weeks. A hell of a lot has happened in two weeks. But what hasn't happened is the crushing depression, the choking anxiety and the 20-hours-a-day sleeping. No binge drinking! No binge-eating!

Chantix + Zoloft is ... well, this just must be how a person with 'normal' brain chemistry experiences this drug. I feel mostly normal, but I have no physical desire to have a cigarette. My brain is still fighting back, but without the physical coercion, I can tough out the insistence of the little addict that lives inside my head.

Of course, there are new and exciting side effects. The insomnia is killing me. Even when I do sleep, I feel as though I'm not sleeping deeply enough. And I wake up at least once a night from this restless sleep, usually at 3:30. If I can go to sleep at all. It's 11:49, and I'm WIRED.

In other news, I would like to rant about the spelling on Craigslist. It's "wrought" iron, not "rot" or "Rott" or "Rod." It's "mirror," not "mirrow," "mirra," or "mirro." In the same vein (not vain), it's "drawer," not "draw."

Until later on.

Mind-altering

This is the part of Chantix where I'm still "sober" enough for the little addict in my brain to realize she is being drugged. She's being 'duped' into not wanting cigarettes anymore. And so, she fights all the harder. She says, "Oh, no. I WANT this cigarette. In fact, maybe I'll have two. No, really, this is awesome." Her voice gets a little louder, a bit more frantic when her little sponsor says this is really fucking stupid, and it's cold, and my lungs hurt, and blergh, this tastes like shit. She starts squealing, "It FEELS GOOD. It TASTES GOOD. NO, REALLY I SWEAR ISN'T THIS AWESOME YOU KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO STOP!!"

So, yeah, that's awesome.

Rainy Saturday

Sure enough, last night, about an hour after I took the first Chantix dose, the nausea hit followed closely by The Weird Headache. This headache is nothing like my normal sinus headaches, which make me feel as though my eyeballs are going to pop out of my skull and make my upper jaw and my cheekbones ache like they're bruised. The Weird Headache is also nothing like the migraines I sometimes get, which start at the base of my neck and -- along with the complete failure of my vision -- bring pain so severe I feel that if I could just bore a hole in my head, the sledgehammer shattering my bones from the inside could escape.

No, The Weird Headache is this vague, floating thing. It's faint, and it drifts around inside the Chantix fog and every once in awhile it thuds dully against a nerve or a pressure point in odd places inside my skull. Behind my left ear. THUD. The top of my head where I part my hair. THUD. Even sometimes the side of my neck. THUD. It floats around for about two hours and then it fades. I hate it more than the nausea.

Mr. Savant got home from work at the tail end of The Weird Headache, when I was fully engulfed in the Chantix fog. He made dinner while I wandered around the house, unsure what I was looking for. For awhile, I stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at nothing. That's pretty awesome, isn't it?

At 7:20, I realized it was Time to Take the Zoloft! An hour after I swallowed THAT pill (better living through pharmacology, an ex-girlfriend of mine used to say) I felt the fog lift. I knitted a little bit. I was able to follow along with the plots of the two TV shows we watched (and one of them was "Lost," so, take that, Chantix!).

Today, I feel a bit foggy, but that could just be the miserable weather outside. I drove to the grocery store and managed to get everything on the list without the benefit of the actual list, which I accidentally left in the car.

The strangest part is that I don't feel the cravings if I don't smoke for awhile. Already. I've only taken one pill so far. Is it a psychosomatic thing? Placebo effect? My body 'remembering' this chemical?

The thing that I am most afraid of: getting fat. Again. I'm not even going to use the politically correct "gaining weight." I'm five feet tall and I should weigh between 100 and 115 pounds. In my 20s I weighed between 95 and 105 pounds, but I lived in New York City, chain-smoked, barely ate and walked absolutely everywhere. Now, I eat better, I've gained a lot of muscle mass through yoga and my miles and miles of daily walking, and a brief period during which I was running 10 miles a week. Now, I fluctuate from about 106 to about 113 depending on the season, the variations of my cycle and my exercise and dietary habits. I'm totally fine with this.

What I'm not going to be fine with is being 137 pounds, which was the heaviest I'd ever weighed. Thanks, Chantix. I looked like shit. I felt like shit. Nothing fit me. I jiggled when I walked. My thighs chafed together. It was really demoralizing and uncomfortable and I felt horrible about myself. Yes, I am a raging feminist who is supposed to love her body and be completely accepting of its changes and its curves. But that doesn't mean I'm immune to the societal and patriarchal pressures to be thin, toned, lean, SKINNY.

And, of course, when I quit smoking and Mr. Savant and I have a baby, that's a completely different thing. It's okay to "gain weight" if I'm pregnant. Sure, no problem. Yes, I know, it's weird. But that's just how I see it from here.

A journey of a thousand miles and all that happy horseshit

Today is Chantix, day 1. Again.

I've put off taking the stupid pill all day.

"I should wait until I eat something."

"Well, I should walk the dog first." (I used this excuse three times.)

"Oh, I have to go to the bank and deposit these checks."

"It's nap time."

"I should eat something first."

Finally, about 10 minutes ago, I ate some multigrain crackers and cheese, poured myself a Coke and opened the box. God, I forgot how stupid the packaging is for this drug. It's all long, flat boxes with pull-tabs and trendy colors -- lime green and aqua with splashes of purple.

Getting into the box filled with other boxes was hard enough. Then I couldn't get the box containing the actual pills open. Perhaps this is a sign, I thought. I shouldn't do this now. Maybe later ...

For once, I pressed on. Actually it was more like tore and shredded my way on. I stared at the little white pills in their clear blisters for a couple seconds. The first three days you're supposed to take one 0.5 milligram tablet once a day.

You're supposed to take it in the morning. And apparently on a day when you wake up to see the sun shining. I know this because next to Pills One, Two and Three is the word "Morning" and a stylized representation of the sun rendered in purple.

I almost managed to convince myself that it certainly wasn't morning and that the sun wasn't expected to reappear until after the weekend -- but that was stupid.

So, at 5:12 pm on March 12 I swallowed the pill. I'm waiting for the nausea I know is coming, followed closely by the headache. I've done this before. I hated every second of it. And now, I have to do it again.

... And home is nowhere

My mom is selling my childhood home. I don't blame her -- it's getting difficult for her, at 60, to manage and maintain a sprawling house, and she's never liked living a fifteen to twenty minute drive outside of town.

But fuck! She's selling the house! No! NO! NONONONONONOOOOO!

I learned to play guitar in that house. I had my own bedroom for the first time. We moved into that house in 1987; I was ten. I GREW UP in that house. Got my first period. Shaved my legs for the first time after Nick Q. made fun of my hairy legs during seventh-grade swimming class. I had birthday parties there. Innumerable family holidays, made all the more wacky by the fact that my mom couldn't cook to save her life.

Homecomings and learning to drive and walking down to the creek to smoke Viceroy cigarettes with my neighbor Tom. Once, a boy skiied miles to that house so he could see me during the blizzard of 1994. Breaking up with that same boy in the driveway and finding my class ring on the seat of my car the next morning. First kisses in the garage in February 1995 that made my knees buckle. Sitting on the stairs and smoking until he had to leave. Sneaking out, sneaking back in.

A secret keg party one summer when my parents were out of town for the weekend. Hair-dye parties in the kitchen and trying to make Baklava for an Art History class project. Watching my first horror movie (Witchboard) at a fifth-grade slumber party.

Whispered late-night phone calls in my bedroom, in the kitchen. And then coming home from college and feeling ... simultaneously safe and relieved and trapped and anxious. I loved and hated that house, that family that we were, the geography, the anticipation that there was so much room, so much space that we had all grown apart. We could all be home and never see each other, never have to run into one another. We had a fucking intercom system, for Christ's sake, so you could push a button and ask where your family was. We were each all alone and something was going to happen.

And when it did, it exploded in that house. We weren't ever the same after that. Fifteen years later and I still sleep poorly there. I won't be upset to let that go. But the rest ... the beautiful innocent breathtaking certainty that the world would always be okay, that the house would fill with joy and laughter instead of aching longing for the rest of it will hurt like hell.

I'm not ready for that. But I have to be. Because I have to help my mother clean out that house on Saturday.