It’s been hard.
It’s been hard to keep track of anything, including my own thoughts. Likes, dislikes. Time. Posting here.
This isn’t a post really. It isn’t a confession. I am sitting here watching ‘The Bachelor’ the words are now flowing from my heart to my fingers to my laptop. The truth is I’ve been stuck and not moving for nearly a year, struggling with depression. It is not my first time. The first time was when I was in grad school and 9/11 was all over the tv and I looked outside my window on what was supposed to be a sunny day and all I saw was death and sadness and danger and clouds and a foul blackness that never seemed to lift. Every day was black and cloudy, and other times I could not breathe. I went to bed at 4 am and slept until 4 pm the next day. The worst moment was when I found myself crumpled up on the bathroom floor, unable to catch my breath, breathing into a paper bag before my thesis presentation. I started seeing a psychiatrist and it got better. Well, somewhat. I didn’t take meds, but I had to leave Wisconsin. The cold and the loneliness wasn’t helping me any. I graduated in 2002. Returned to Charlotte.
The second time was after I had my first child, in 2004. I loved my newborn son–his little face, his gentle brown eyes, his sweet smile. Cleaning his nursery, fixing his bottle, nightly baths. I never waivered or slipped in my motherly duties. But two weeks later while on maternity leave then it all flipped into a single, unassailable truth: my life is over. No more fun, no laughter, just me sitting at home being a mother to the now-present little life that I’d held inside of me for nine months. Oh God Oh God Oh God. This time I went to group therapy. And sitting around talking honestly did help, sharing my experiences with other women who were like me. After a year of the therapy and journaling and really hard daily prayer, it was over. I thought I had beaten it. For good.
Fast forward to January 2011. Nearing middle age, gray hairs. My son is now 7 years old. He has ADHD. Although he scores above average on IQ tests, it is sometimes hard for him to maintain focus. His father and I are no longer, I am a single parent. Maintaining a household, motherly duties, grading papers, going to work, fixing dinner. Grad school class from 5:15 to 8:45 every Tuesday. I put on 20 lbs. Everything seemed to morph into a great blur and there seemed to be no exit, no escape. No end in sight. It all became so much that one night I just fell into the bed and slept for 2 days. When I awoke there was the intense fear of doing anything or going anywhere because it was just another item on a never-ending list of daily drudgery. I saw a therapist and honestly nothing changed, I was still spending nights bunched up crying on my bathroom floor, unable to move. I went on meds (which I’m still on) and things got a little better, even more so when summer came around and work was over for the year and class wasn’t in session. Fast forward to October and the rain clouds appeared again, in the form of aches and pains and headaches and an intense feeling that any moment could be the moment that my heart would finally explode. Every day was a bad day, a day that I wished I hadn’t woken up for. I knew that something had to change, and that maybe the words that I used to write when I was feeling this way would be the key.
So I’m going to give it another try. Please be patient with me. This has been a long, winding road and I’m nowhere near the end of my journey. But with time and Evernote to store these posts whenever and wherever I write them, a change will come.
