Wednesday
I’ve got all these firsts lined up. It’s going to be my first time taking Ambien — next week, Mike says. It was my first time to enter and win a competition. 
For the first time in months, I’m actually feeling something positive — feeling proud of myself. For once, my oldest son was thoughtful. He put an egg cup right in the middle of the kitchen table. When I saw it, I thought he was hungry and soft-boiled an egg. On his way out the door, he said the cup was the closest thing he could think of to a 1st prize trophy without having to buy one and was gone before I could tell him about the egg. I’ll tell him when he gets back.
But that’s been me for most of this year. I’ve been driving the family nuts. After the first weeks of zombie jokes, even the boys got tired of it. When I lost my job, everyone went very quiet, like their world just ended. Then everything changed the day I came back from shopping, and topped up the salt box with sugar and put the salt in with the flour. My husband, Dave, was in tears when he tried to eat the food I cooked. Then took the “final decision”. He’d been thinking about it for weeks but this was the final straw. He took the car keys away from me. Said I wasn’t safe. Didn’t know what I was doing most of the time. Since then, I’ve been prowling round the house in a vague kind of way, thinking I ought to do something, but actually not doing much of anything.
It’s like I’m in a daze. I see something and react but, mostly, it’s the wrong reaction. Or worse, not the right reaction in a screwy way. Mike, he’s like my agent now, placing what I write on this internet site, says when I start taking Ambien, it’s going to change my world to like it was, before.
Mike’s told me not to look Ambien up on the internet — the boys have a PC, but I don’t know how to make it work so he’s quite safe. He’s also said there’s a different version of the same thing called Ambien CR. I’m supposed to take the ordinary Ambien medication and react, write about how it makes me feel. He’s arranging for me to go see a physician. We’ve got no health insurance except what the Salvation Army worker told us about. That’s Medicaid and the state’s child health insurance programs so the boys have been covered. Not that they’ve been sick at all. But we all felt better knowing they were insured. But Dave and me haven’t had cover since the boys were born. When I stopped working back then, we didn’t have the money. So this will be the first time I’ve seen a physician about myself since then.
Mike says I’ll get Ambien as part payment for writing about myself. And if this Ambien doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, they’ll keep me on to write about the other kinds of treatment for what’s wrong with me. I’ll be like a kind of case study for all their readers. I hope it’ll all turn out alright.
I can hear Dave coming in so I’ll stop now and go help him cook. He tells me what to do and watches me to make sure I don’t make any mistakes. Perhaps when I take this Ambien, I really can get back to how I was.
Tags: Ambien, Ambien CR, Ambien medication