Living with anxiety and depression has been... an experience. I don't even want to give it a label, because it's been so many things at different points in my life. Painful. Agonizing. Eye opening. Cathartic. Frustrating. Immobilizing. Paralyzing. Mostly paralyzing.
But living with this shit in my head while caring for a toddler? Whole new ball game.
While I was pregnant I became very paranoid about post partum depression. I knew, given my history, I was at an increased risk. I had these vivid waking nightmares about being that crazy lady you read about in the paper who drowns her kids and ends up being committed instead of going to jail and gets treatment for post partum psychosis but then can't handle the pain of what she did so she jumps off a bridge but it doesn't kill her and she's permanently broken both physically and mentally for the rest of her life..... Okay, so for those of you who haven't been pregnant, disclaimer: hormones make you crazy.
I remember extracting many promises from my dear partner to watch me like a hawk. Which it turns out was a tad naive, because when you're that sleep deprived you ain't watching shit.
Regardless, we survived the newborn days. All three of us. No drownings. No post partum crazy. A few regular new parent crazy, but that's to be expected and forgiven.
A tiny, naked, shivering creature inside me began to hope. I had been off medication for almost two years. I had been out of therapy for over a year. It wasn't all smooth sailing, but our new family had weathered every crisis, and I had taken my combined tools from therapy and life and managed to keep the crazy at bay. After two years of keeping my shit together, I began to hope.
Until it struck again.
Hyperbole and a Half did a fantastic job explaining her experiences with depression. Far better than I can do. At one point she talks about being "too hopeless for hope". In my head it's a well that you're trapped within, that not only do you not begin to hope for a rope out, if someone offers you said rope you don't have the energy to take it, because to do so would be to hope and really what's the point because the rope would probably break or lead to nowhere better or be an imaginary rope. I'll just stay here in my well. It's not so bad. There's moss and stuff.
Here's the thing about depression... Here's the thing that frustrates the outsiders. We aren't. Depressed. ABOUT. Anything. It's not an event driven phenomenon. Triggered, perhaps, but even after the trigger is removed we're still trapped in the well. Or the trigger is something so inconsequential it's ludicrous. Or there is no trigger. You just trip, and fall in a well. Oops.
I tripped. I have no idea what I tripped on. I'd like to think after all my work (hard, intense, internal, painful work) in therapy and on my own that I'm fairly adept at stepping back and looking at what my brain is doing. Framing my brain as a parasitic entity out to get me, helps me to frame my experiences when I'm deep inside an anxiety attack, so I can halt it's progress and re-ground myself. It's not foolproof, it's not easy, but it works for me. The thing with depression, however, is that I try to step back and say "Hey dude. That thing your brain is doing? That empty you're feeling? Not real, dude. Your brain is totally lying to you. Snap out of it." But that "too hopeless for hope" sets in. It doesn't matter that my little hopeful creature acknowledges that this is just chemicals firing at the wrong things, or failing to fire at all, that doesn't fix it. It doesn't halt it. It doesn't change it. So why bother.
Here's the kicker: I have a son. He's wonderful. He's amazing. He's freaking adorable. He's my rope.
I spent a silly amount of time in my basement yesterday, with my eyes leaking, eating a bag of chips and watching TV. (I can't call it crying because I'm not sad, it's just what my body is doing to try and remind itself that emotions exist). This is typical depressed-stuck-in-a-well-fuck-everything behaviour for me, because I have an unhealthy relationship with both food and television. But then I looked at the time and realized I had to pick up my Son from daycare.
Full disclosure here: In that brief moment, I resented the shit out of him. I disclose this because it's not the first time, it won't be the last time, and if you're a mom you've felt it too. We just don't talk about it. But I was comfortable in my funk, in my well with my moss and my chips (my well has chips in it, fuck off) and I resented having to leave that. But as a mom, you don't have much of a choice. I resent getting up at 3am when he wakes up with a nightmare, but I do it, and if I don't exactly do it with a smile on my face at least I do it with love in my heart.
I pulled myself off the couch, put pants on, washed my face and drove to pick him up. I took a few minutes, à la Allie Brosh, to practice my facial expressions, trying to nail down the No-I-haven't-been-crying-all-day-nothing's-wrong-I-swear look. I failed because she asked me if I was feeling alright. It's a terrible feeling, knowing that seeing your child grinning from ear to ear should fill you with immeasurable joy, but not being able to experience it. Like the Happy is pounding on sound proof glass, wanting to be let in but locked out.
My point is this: Seeing him didn't magically clear my head and make me "normal". In fact, the inability to truly appreciate how much I love him, because it was squashed under mountain of depression, only served to make me more depressed. However, looking at this goofily grinning face in my rear view mirror, while I attempted to drive and cry and sing him a song all at the same time, reminded me why it's still worth trying even when it feels hopeless.
It's not easy. Pretty much nothing about being a parent is. And there are days when I will bear a striking resemblance to that mom from About A Boy, crying while she makes her kid cereal. But it's worth hanging on until the hopelessness passes and the rope doesn't look quite so scary. It's worth climbing out of the well. It never feels worth it, and for me I probably wouldn't bother to hope. But for him, I'll nurse that tiny, scared little hopeful creature and ride it out.
I can ride this out.
[Thanks to the talented Mike Doughty for the inspired title.]
