Sex and the Silos: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Ohidoa City Truly is a Great Place to Live

When Ann told me about her day I completely understood where Joseph was coming from.

"I know, I know," Ann said. "Trust me, I know how important Xanax is!"

Like myself, Ruth and Justina, Ann also was on mood regulating medication. Ann was old school and was still on Prozac. Justina was using a cocktail of Celexa and Ativan, while Ruth was holding steady on Effexor. I'm currently on Lexapro maintenance, with clonazepam when necessary.
I've been a card-carrying member of the crazy club for about five years. Before that, it took me five years to figure out I actually had an illness and that it wasn't just how life is, another three to realize it was bad enough to need help, and the final year working up to making the appointment. It was important to me that my therapist know that I wasn't really sure I even needed the medication and that I wasn't one of "those people," you know, the real wackos. A couple years later, at my psychiatrist's now because my medication needs had become more complex, my doctor gently ended that fantasy. "This is probably something you will need to manage for the rest of the your life," he said sympathetically, so sympathetically I could almost picture myself at his vacation home in Hawaii.

Being on "happy pills" as they still call them around here, puts you in the company of at least 75 percent of the rest of the adult population of Ohidoa City, but only 10 percent will actually talk openly about it. Shame is one of our birthrights.

Later that night, as I thought about Ann and Joseph and the great Xanax incident of 2006, I wondered why we all seemed to need medication to simulate contentment and happiness. Were our lives really that bad? What would life be like if we couldn't chemically alter our brains to make it more tolerable?

I decided to start with an expert. My mother, like many native Ohidoan mothers, was a martyr who never passed up an opportunity to let us know exactly how we were failing at making her happy. She raised three kids while my father spent most of his time at work and the rest of it trying to stay out of her way. As far as I know, the only time she ever really took for herself were the three or four times a day when she would retreat into the bathroom to sneak a cigarette. She would emerge from the bathroom in a great cloud of Chantilly powder in an effort to disguise the evidence.

"I know I was depressed, but I didn't have a choice," my mother tells me as we sit down to chat over a cup of instant Folgers. Her use of the past tense amuses me. "What could I do? I had three kids to raise and there wasn't anyone there to take over."


"Did you ever think about seeing someone?"

"Hmmph," she snorts. "I didn't want to tell a stranger my personal business. What could they do? They couldn't make me happy. Besides, I always had your father to talk to."

"They can help give you some perspective and some tools to help you deal with your problems," I say. "It's never too late to go, you know. I think you could still get some benefit out of it."

"Oh, I'm okay now," she says quickly. "I've dealt with my problems. I've decided that I'm just not going to let things bother me so much anymore." Sure, she started crying three months ago when the Christmas turkey didn't cook, and rated it a "10" on the crisis scale, but really, she's fine.

So maybe the problem isn't that our lives are that much worse; maybe we just aren't as good at denial. Would we all be happier if we just pretended our problems didn't exist?

"I don't think so," Justina said as we walked out to feed her horses. "I mean, how can you really be happy if you don't deal with any of your problems?"

Justina's problem, for the moment, was an inability to get laid. She'd been going without for more than eight months, and it didn't help that the animals were definitely feeling spring coming on.


"But are we really dealing with it if we're taking medication to make it all better?"

"The medication helps us deal with it." She hefted a bucket of oats into the trough. "If I wasn't on meds, I would just be sitting around thinking about how unattractive I must be since I can't find anyone to go to bed with. But instead, I'm out here taking care of my horses, running my business...." She paused for a minute. "And thinking about how unattractive I must be since I can't find anyone to go to bed with me."

"C'mon, Justina. You aren't unattractive, there just isn't that much of a choice in Ohidoa. That's not your fault. If we lived in New York City you'd be getting laid all the time."

"Well, we don't, and I'm not," she said. "It really sucks. I am so horny Lynn! I'm jealous of my horses for God's sake! I mean, have you seen the schlong on Laying Down the Law? He's flaunting it at me, I can tell."

"There, there," I tell her as we walk back to the house. "It'll happen. Just try to be patient and put the vibe out there when you can."

"Yeah, right," she says, pouring two glasses of wine. "You know, my mom and dad used to have a cocktail before supper, wine with supper, and a nightcap after supper. They may not have had Prozac, but they were just as medicated as we are, if not more. Denial my ass--they just went through life shitfaced."