Parenting with a Mental Illness

When my kids frustrate me and I lose my temper, I often have thoughts like “I hate you so much right now. I wish you were someone else’s problem.” Some weeks I want as little to do with my kids as possible. I don’t want to look at them. I don’t want to listen to them. I don’t even want to hear about what charming little things they did.

To put it bluntly, I don’t want to be a mom. I admit, some days aren’t so bad. But raising my own kids feels like a punishment rather than an adventure. I feel like Sisyphus – I wake up, do my best, only to make a mistake and watch all my progress roll back down the metaphorical hill, right to where I started.

To be fair, I’ve only really experienced parenthood from depressed and anxious mental state. I hated being pregnant from week 6 onward. I cried whenever the nurses left me alone with my son right after he was born. I have struggled with finding lasting peace and acceptance of this change in my life- and I now have two kids and my son is almost 4. I don’t think any parent would be enchanted by or happy about parenting when the outcome has led to lasting damage.

I had serious postpartum depression after my son was born and I spent a few weeks in the hospital being treated for suicidal ideation, because I couldn’t see a reason to keep living. Right after my daughter was born, for a small fraction of a moment, I kind of understood why people wanted more than one kid. But then my symptoms came back. My premenstrual dysphoric disorder reared its ugly head, and I have to battle this along with being a parent.

 PMDD has no cure. There are band-aids like medication, therapy, and exercise, but none of them stop my brain from feeling suicidal every month.

For all my fellow parents out there- you know the struggle of having to put an energetic child back in bed for the 50^th time. What it’s like to clean up vomit out of the carpet because they missed their bucket. The giant messes. The tantrums. The backtalk. These things alone are draining.  

I’m one of the several thousands of women who get the added bonus of feeling like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde every month. My own mind is working against me and I have to hold it together and be a decent parent. I feel like a concert pianist with my hands tied behind my back and I can only play with my nose, but I’m still expected to play Chopin perfectly.

Crying “life isn’t fair” will get me a Captain Obvious award. But I don’t know what else there is to say. I could go into a whole historical rant where expectations of modern mothers far exceed any expectations of historical mothers when it comes to childrearing. But none of that is going to stop the fact that this is my reality.

My reality is that I’m so frustrated with trying to keep myself together. I’m frustrated that I wake up some mornings with “I should die today” as my constant thought and still have to get out of bed and feed the kids and deal with tantrums like nothing’s wrong. I’m frustrated that toddlers are destructive and full of energy and I like a semblance of order and I have little to no energy. I’m frustrated by people sharing their “look how perfect my baby is. I love them so much. They’re my whole world. There’s nothing better than being a parent.” Not because they’re wrong, but because I have never seen parenthood that way, but feel expected to react that way when talking about my kids. I’m frustrated because my own capabilities are so limited, and so instead of hating myself- I end up hating my kids.

I know myself well enough to know that when I’m sad, I try to be productive through anger. Anger will make me clean up a mess. Sadness will make me stare at it and cry. Anger will make me save a crying child while sadness will make me let them scream. Anger moves me, sadness roots me. I have told myself and even got to a point where I legitimately believed that I hate my children. But the truth is, I hate myself. And that self-loathing has been a constant companion throughout my whole life.  I just projected it onto my kids because they are mine and I taught them to talk like me, act like me- and I hate what I see. But I know it is not them. It’s all me.

My biggest struggle is staying sane every month when it’s easier to yell and scream, and cry, and the only solution I find in this state of mind to fixing this stupid mess of my own self-sabotage is death. Because if I was dead, I wouldn’t be scarring my children for life. My husband wouldn’t have to wonder if today was a safe day to leave me home alone. Because the future looks so bleak, especially when I know that I’m going to deal with this for a vast majority of my adult life. Every month I turn into a monster, and every month I have to rebuild my relationship with my husband and kids and sometimes my extended family and friends. Every month I feel suicidal- sometimes it’s a passing thought, and other days, like today, I just want this torture to end.

Being a parent while feeling like a walking time bomb just sucks. I wonder what I did to deserve this situation. Emotional experience chalks it up to me being a terrible child. I made my parents hate me, so this is what I get. I know logically that doesn’t make sense- but emotionally it feels like the only answer that makes sense. Because bad things happen to bad people right?

But that’s not true. Things happen to people regardless of their “goodness” or “badness”. People get sick. People lose their jobs. Accidents happen. Attributing a punishment/reward mentality to life does nothing but make things more confusing.

Nobody “deserves” a mental illness.

I wanted kids when I talked about marriage with my husband when we were dating. I wanted kids after we were married. But once I had them, my own negative childhood experiences and my physical and mental state have painted parenthood as bleak and soul sucking. It’s nothing against my kids. This is just my burden to bear. I’m sure there are plenty of other parents out there who have felt something similar.

For those parents who too feel inadequate, guilty, or otherwise just plain awful because of what cards were dealt to them, I’ll gladly be the first to tell you it’s okay to not like parenting. It’s okay that your kids aren’t the center of your universe. It’s okay that you don’t feel as in love with being a parent as you “should” be. You don’t need to have an incredible bond with your child in order for you to be a “good” parent.

I admitted to my doctor that I wished that I could have taken motherhood off my plate. He didn’t berate me. He knew that my feelings were a legitimate concern and we had a good talk.  If you have similar feelings- share them with your doctor, therapist, trusted friend, or on a hotline if needed. You aren’t an awful person because of those feelings. Your feelings are a symptom, not a cause.

It’s scary to admit things like this out loud. Some people won’t take it well. Breathe. Keep trying until you find the person who listens, who understands. There may not be a magic cure to make it all go away, but it’s easier to find hope when you have an ally, than when you’re all alone.  

What living with PMDD feels like.

If periods make you queasy, then the TL;DR version is: I feel like Dr. Jekyll half the time and Mr.Hyde the other.

I've talked about Depression, Pregnancy, Social Anxiety, and childhood trauma here on my blog. But I haven't paid much attention to my PMDD.

Pre Menstural Dysphoric Disorder is basically my brain going on the fritz when I'm menstruating. It's not typical PMS. I still get regular period symptoms, like the bleeding,the cramping, the bloating, the irritableness. But on top of that I experience extreme depression, lack of concentration, low motivation, and often deal with thoughts of suicide or homicide.

Now the last bit might sound scary. I'm not going to sugar coat it- it is scary. Because on any given month, one day could have been great and the next morning I wake up to thoughts of "wouldn't things be better if I was dead?"

Night and day. That's what it's like. I go from friendly, invite everyone over for games and food, Daria to think thoughts like "if my children squeal one more time I'm going to smother them." I go from churning out projects like a machine to barely touching anything that isn't junk food or my phone. One moment I'm happy mom eager to sing silly songs to scary mom who shoves the children in their room and let them wrestle eachother to death.

And to be completely honest- it's terrifying. Somedays it's like that Studio C sketch- the "boys brain" and every aspect of the boy's mind is in charge but rational thought.

I like to think of my brain ala inside out, but with only two people in charge- Rational Thought and Emotional Thought. Emotional thought during my mebstural cycle liked to put herself on loudspeaker and shout at the top of her lungs whatever she is feeling in that moment. She has control of the panels and she does whatever feels right. Crying, screaming, hiding, stress eating, scroll through Facebook for hours, etc.

Rational is shoved aside and is the one mumbling in the background about how irrational my behavior is- "of course we don't want to be dead. Death doesn't actually solve any of these problems!"

Or when I yell - "Oh yeah. Great parenting right there. Did you really need to shout? Does it really make you feel that great?"

Or when I curl up in my bed and hide all day - "well, that was a productive day."

I know I'm overreacting to small problems. I know I didn't need to yell, or hide, or get into arguments. But I can't turn my emotions off. So I just ride the waves as best I can. I try to be rational, I really really do.

But my energy level is so low- because it was drained by moping, and fighting to get out of bed and get dressed. Or it was drained by having to deal with a toddler who refuses to stay in bed and finding the means to stay calm in the face of chaos. And this drainage happens. Every. Single. Month.

For half of the month, I'm my normal self. Human, but capable of handling life. The other half I turn into my evil twin.

It's rough. And it's scary. And I HATE it when I try to explain what's going on and it's just laughed off as silly PMS. Like I'm over exaggerating. Like my diagnosis is a no brainer.

I was in the hospital twice for suicidal ideation. A month apart. On my freaking period. I was okay after being released and then my cycle started again and I was not okay. I have evidence to prove that this is not all in my head. I am not faking or pretending things are worse to get attention.

So why tell all of this. Because I'm scared. Because I yell, and scream, and am purposefully mean because my first priority when I feel like this is "make whatever is causing me stress stop"- and my biggest stressors are my kids.

I tell this because I feel so alone. Because I have no idea what I need on bad days. Because I don't feel in control of myself at all. I feel like a monster. I feel unworthy of love and help because of how uncharacteristically cruel and short I can be. And it lasts two weeks and then it's over. I can be myself again for a little bit.

But then the process repeats.

In case you are saying to yourself "But Daria, what about birth controll?"

I am on birth control. It is a hormone. It has helped with my long lasting heavy flows, but it has not stopped the cycle of happy Dasha to Dasha Hyde.

"What about pregnancy?" If you haven't ready any of my blog posts about my pregnancies- pregnancy is a special living hell for me.

"What about medication?" Meds are important. They are. But they don't solve everything. They don't prevent the fight or flight response in cases of stress. They don't make every period cycle a smooth transition. Oh and they make my body hate me for a while- very very unhappy guts.

I feel like two different people. Happy Daria makes plans that Dasha Hyde is incapable of following through. It's like trying to keep a schedule with your worst enemy- you both hate eachother and wish the other would just shut up and do what I want already.

I wish this wasn't the demon I had to face. But here I am. My personal demon is the face I see in the mirror. It is terrifying. It is scary. And I really, really hate this. 

Sometimes I'm a Bad Friend

I’ve haven’t been treating my friends very well lately. Which is really, really unlike me. Because I care. I hate scaring people. I hate inconveniencing people. I strive to be the kind of person who is ready to be there for you whenever the need arises.

Because I didn’t have that growing up.

I didn’t have a person who stood in my corner when I was attacked. I didn’t have a people react well to being bothered when they were busy. I didn’t have a person who called out bad behavior. I didn’t have a person who protected me from the scariest person in the world.

I became that person, because I knew no one else was going to stand up for my siblings or my mother. I had to be the brave one. The strong one. The one who fought back. I claimed the role of Momma Bear, Mother Hen, the Protector, because nobody else would take on the mantle.  I never wanted anyone to ever feel the way I did.

The flip side of being the protective one, is that you gather a lot of people who rely on you. You gather people who look to you for comfort, love, advice, inspiration, etc. But they aren’t the kind of people whose first instinct is to catch you as you fall. They expect you to continue to stay strong no matter what.

So, when I say I haven’t been a very good friend lately- I should clarify. To me, my “bad” behavior looks like ignoring text messages, ending phone calls instead of answering, avoiding my friends.

Why am I doing that?

The short answer is “I’m tired.”

The full answer is a little bit more nuanced.

I have depression. Some days are really, really bad. Bad in this context means I’m struggling.

Struggling with feeling emotionally drained- like those times you have when you’ve been dealing with conflict with loved ones or when one bad thing after another keeps happening- and finding the “happy” is not the first thing on your mind. My struggles include sensitivity to noises, like screaming, crying, loud or repetitive sounds- they make me clench my teeth and flinch. Motivation is low- because things don’t hold much interest, or their demand of my attention feels draining.

So I did what I normally do on a particularly bad day- I reached out the best way I can when I feel drained- by sharing a Facebook post letting people know I’m not okay.

But I always have impeccable timing- because on my really bad days, everyone else is having an incredibly busy or rough day too. Normally I just give up on the fact that anyone will be able to help me at that moment and just lay on my bed and distract myself until hubby gets home.

However recently, with the amount of reoccurring “bad day, I let people know, nobody comes to help” instances, it’s beginning to feel like I’m not worth it. People read my “I’m having a bad day” and think I just woke up on the side of the bed. When my reality is my brain is telling me to jump in front of a bus, my kids are being typical destructive screaming toddlers, and I can’t stop crying.

On those days I feel like the worst parent in the world because I yell, because I want my noise to be heard. On those days I feel like a waste of space. The epitome of human garbage. My attempts of reaching out for someone, anyone to just come and sit in my house while I cry on their shoulder, or shower, or just have a quiet house for fifteen minutes and is met with nothing but “I’m sorry” and “love you” makes me want to scream.

I scroll on the internet, waiting to just feel numb so I can attempt to tune out the “I’m garbage” echoes in my head. And when friends see my post and text or call, all asking me to do something- let them know if there’s anything they can do, do I want to go out, do I need anything- I was angry.

Angry that I had to continue to explain how I felt. Angry that my call for help was interpreted as a “I’m being a good friend if I ask you how you’re doing ” instead of the one thing I actually needed.

All that anger brought up other memories, memories of me reaching out the best way I knew how – asking to live with friends because I couldn’t stand living at home anymore and being told no. Trying to explain how bad things were and being brushed off with, "everyone get’s mad sometimes." There were more times than I can remember- and no one believed me, or were too busy to do anything.

I relied on isolation then, to protect myself. And I have reverted back to isolation now to cope with my feelings of rejection and dismissal. I feel angry even now, even though the recent occurrence was a week ago. Because it’s easier to be angry and lash out, then it is to sit in isolation and feel truly, and undeniably alone.

Rationally, I know I’m not being fair to the people who have worried about me for days. I know it’s not fair to judge them for their lives being busy, having obligations, or having their own bad days.

Emotionally I wish they never made the promise “call me if you need anything” because it feels like a lie. A lie that they tell to feel good about themselves, but one they never intend to act upon. Which is unfair, because friends do come help, family does reach out and watch the kids. I don’t expect people to revolve around my life, nor would I want them to. I just wish that people understood the depth and true severity of the situations when I make my “It’s a bad day” posts. Because on days like that, I don’t need your words of concern or affirmation. I need a hug. I need a babysitter. I need someone else to actually be the strong one while I lose it.

I’m sure some of my good friends reading this are like, you told us you wanted us to check in, and now you don’t? Why do you keep changing what you need?

Because I’m human. Because on bad days, words of affirmation feel like lies. They don’t sink in. “I love you!” from far away is as good as “I ate a sandwich”. It’s just words. There’s no, “I love you enough to drive over. I love you enough to watch your kids. I love you enough to hold you while you cry. I love you enough to listen. “ That’s the difference. And I’m going to admit that when it’s a really bad day, like last week, I still might not respond well. I’ll still isolate myself, I still won’t believe anything you say, I will still be emotionally distant. Because I’m struggling, and the words “I’m garbage”, “Why am I not good enough?” will be the soundtrack in my brain. And all that any of us can do is wait it out.

I guess the thing I hope you take away from me sharing these occurrences is to check in before your friends post they’re having a bad day. If they are having a bad day, and you are able to- take them food, a good movie or game, give them a hug, clean their house, put them in the shower - anything to let them know that you care both in words and in deed.

The other thing that I think is incredibly important to understand about people with mental health issues is explaining everything that’s going on in their head can be complicated, extremely frustrating to condense, or just plain exhausting. It really can be a struggle to have to tell people over and over and over again why you feel sad- when maybe the only reason is the chemical imbalance and the medication isn’t adapting. You are not entitled to the inner working’s of their mind. It’s not wrong to ask them what’s wrong. Just let them know that they don’t have to talk about it or explain everything. Let them know that you are there to be supportive presence, and not another drain upon their energy.

I really do have good friends, whom I love and I know love me. Right now I'm working on forgiving the ones in the past and the ones in the present for not saving me when I wanted to be saved.

Adventures with a New Therapist

I went to see a new therapist today. It was not a good therapy day. Not because of the paperwork, that’s just a necessary evil. No. Today was difficult because I had to answer questions that even I don’t ask myself anymore.

Trying to explain to a complete stranger why you answered “I feel the dread of impending doom” on a questionnaire is no easy feat. Because trying to take your thoughts and translate them into comprehensible English is hard enough. Add crying to the mix just makes it that much more difficult.

To answer the question- things just…

Bad things happen to everyone. But it often feels like the universe likes to be particularly cruel with its distribution of “sucky-ness” when it comes to me and my family. It’s hard to be excited for the future when you know that getting your hopes up for good things is just asking for heartbreak. Example, getting kicked out of your house not long after Christmas. Finding out your parent has a disease and watching them being hooked up to a machine daily in order to live. Watching another parent go through an already sucky pregnancy and then miscarrying.  Sibling getting injured right after a parent loses a job.

And from the stories from one parent’s childhood- let me just say, that they’ve been dealt a whole load of suck their entire life, and it just only goes down hill from there.

So I find it extremely hard to find things to be excited about in the “future”. If I want to function like a slightly normal person, I don’t allow myself to think that far ahead. Because the future only holds chaos, pain, and day to day suck fests.

I still cling to the immature belief that good things should happen to good people and life proves me wrong every step of the way. I just want things to lighten up. I want the world to just freeze and be okay for five freaking minutes. But life doesn’t work like that.

Everyone has tragedies, crises, failures, and letdowns. Everyone also has good things happen to.

But back to therapy.

I know people mean well when they bring up the good things. Like my little family. But again, this stranger doesn’t know me yet. They don’t know that I originally sought out therapy because I believed that my son “stole the sun”. I believed that my pregnancy with him screwed me up. On the really bad days sometimes I still believe that. But I’m seeking therapy now to try and heal from my miserable, awful childhood.

It was hard answering question after question about why I answered the way I did, only to start crying all over again and have to take five minutes just to be able to speak. Again, crying isn’t weakness- I’m just annoyed because it’s a barrier to explaining my thoughts.

After our session, I wanted to call up my previous therapist. I wanted therapy for going to therapy. Haha.

I feel raw. I feel drained. I feel all the emotions of digging up the past- anger, pain, vulnerable, protective. I am again emotionally paralyzed and I can’t do anything remotely productive when it comes to work. My hands and my brain aren’t responding. Because all I want to do is curl up in my bed and listen to lives other than my own- be they on the internet or in an audiobook until I don’t feel anymore. 

Mazes and Whirlpools

Living with anxiety and depression. Perhaps those who have never experienced it first or second hand know what its like. You may picture a person sitting in the same clothes for two weeks straight, laying in bed, staring at a phone or into space, with a hollow look in their eyes and are in serious need of a shower and some real food. That’s a very decent description of what it looks like on the outside. Symptoms people can easily see and respond too. But that isn’t depression- that’s how an individual reacts to their depression.

When I say that I have anxiety and depression I am trying to let you see how I interpret the world around me, and why I say or respond to situations. Let’s start with anxiety.

I have social anxiety. For me, that means I have a really hard time processing social cues, and the larger the group the more intimidated and self conscious I feel.  

Example: When in a small group of people I don’t know, I usually babble and chatter. I become extra outgoing. To others I appear to be the extrovert and comfortable in awkward situations. To me, I am babbling to prevent the people in the group from saying anything that might intimidate me, criticize me, or outright tell me I don’t belong. I want people to like me. I want people to think I’m funny. I want people to think well of me. Because my anxiety likes to tell me that I am boring, that I have nothing important to say, that I am a waste of space and everyone else wishes I just disappeared.

When the encounter is all over, I will go home and think about everything I said. I will analyze every single reaction everyone had to everything I said. And no matter how well I acted, I will be convinced that all those people will still think I’m boring, everything I said was unimportant, and probably “will this girl ever shut up?”

But that’s just one scenario. Every day feels like I’m in a maze- but I wasn’t told when I entered the maze if it was a haunted maze like the ones at Halloween or not. So I not only feel lost, I am extremely cautious about every choice I make because I don’t know if that choice will lead me into the face of some hideous monster, or just a dead end. Which makes me hyper vigilant.

I must make sure that I rehearse everything I’m going to say before I call someone I’m not well acquainted with.

If I’m not sure about which entrance we go through at an event, I make my husband go first.

If we go out to eat, I make sure to memorize everything I’m going to say so I don’t have to repeat myself or come across as a difficult customer.

If I feel like something I am doing is annoying, inconvenient, or rude, I have to triple and quadruple check that the person is okay with it.

I apologize for everything- from stating my opinion, to going off on tangents, to little things that only I would notice but bother me nonetheless.

Little things can set off my anxiety- and I am just on edge and it’s hard to relax until I am at home, sitting down and watching a familiar show.

For those with good sleuthing skills, you may have noticed some things that also resemble depression- the negative self talk for one.

My metaphor for depression is called “The Whirlpool of Suck”.  You don’t always realize just how caught up you are at first. But you start to notice that you’re going in a circle- because depression is a self feeding cycle. You find yourself not eating, not sleeping very well, avoiding social situations- which in turn makes you feel physically and emotionally awful. Which then makes you continue not to eat well, sleep well, and being around people just sounds like too much work. See how it works?

So as you withdraw more and more into yourself, that’s when those pesky negative thoughts arise “what am I doing?” “I am a waste of space” “Life just sucks”. Which feeds into the already unpleasant physical symptoms. The more I feel like this, the more it feels like I’m getting dragged underwater and can barely keep afloat.

With the Whirlpool of suck, it is easy to grab a life line and get pulled out of the circular current. Friends drop by and make you eat, take you out, remind you of things you like to do. You find a video of cute animals that brighten your day. Not every day is spent in the whirlpool. Sometimes, you really are just happy and content. And sometimes one negative thought or encounter can pull you quickly into the current and you get close to the center where you feel stuck and about to go under at any second. That’s where the suicidal thoughts arise. That’s where self harm arises. That’s where finding any outlet be it mindlessly playing video games, watching television or drug and alcohol abuse take place. Because it’s that thin barrier between wanting to escape the pain permanently or temporarily. That’s when the depressed individual stares into the abyss and fights with themselves, debating on whether or not to prepare for the inevitable or keep trying to stay alive, even if it destroys them.

I am living with depression and anxiety- sometimes I’m in the maze. Sometimes I’m in the whirlpool. Sometimes the maze leads me into the whirlpool or vice versa. And on some blessed days I am a normal person who can handle what the world throws at me, who easily tells the negative thoughts to go to the hell where they belong, and can smile and truly enjoy each and every happy moment.

Everyone’s battle with mental illness is unique to their own struggles, but the symptoms are the same. 

Every day is not spent in the Whirlpool of Suck or the Maze of Anxiety. That’s why when the people 

you know are having a good day, celebrate it with them. That’s why if the next day they are having a crummy day, give them love and support- because they enjoy being in their maze or whirlpool as much as you enjoy seeing them there.

I don’t know if these metaphors improved your understanding of what life is like living with mental illnesses, but I hope that you can show more compassion to those that struggle. We are doing the best we can even when we look like the very picture of depression or a Norman Rockwell cartoon. We are all human after all, and struggles are what makes life, life.  

The Truth about Baking

Generally, you can tell I am avoiding something when I am baking simply for the sake of baking. Sounds silly I know. But Let me explain. Baking bread weekly (because I like sandwiches and having toast for breakfast), whipping up cakes for birthdays, or making soft pretzels for the holidays, or I want homemade tortilla chips to go with my homemade salsa, or fresh naan bread to go with curry night- those are all normal reasons to be turning up the oven and rolling my hands in dough. It’s the days when out of the blue I am making big complicated recipes like cinnamon rolls, or starting three different types of cookies in the middle of the day that people should be addressing me with “Put down the spoon, and tell me what’s wrong.”

Honestly, I didn’t know that baking was my warning bell, air raid sirens blaring, red flag waving tell that I was avoiding something until my very first semester of college. Every time there was an exam I didn’t feel ready for, a deadline for a paper, or simply just a lot of homework all due at the same time- you’d find me baking banana bars with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, cinnamon rolls, or snickerdoodles (I have a thing for cinnamon). After I realized that I used up all of my studying time to take goodies to all of the neighbors that I liked in the dorm, it hit me that as nice as I was being to others I was avoiding studying.

For the past two weeks, all I’ve wanted to do is bake. Not just bread, not just the occasional brownie because I’m craving it. I mean I’m scouring pinterest for specialty dessert breads, scones, cookies, muffins, cupcakes, pies, cakes- if it goes in the oven it is now on my baking board.

“But Daria,” you are probably asking, “you’re not in school right now, what could you possibly be avoiding?”

Vague and evasive me would first say “the inevitable.” But honest and blunt me will just say “motherhood.”

Now I know that there are plenty of questions that arise with “How can you avoid being a mother? You talk about your toddler and your pregnancy all the time.”

Well, I’ve wanted to write up a piece about the struggles of having depression while pregnant, but every time I started my thoughts weren’t cohesive enough to be anything worth reading. But today I feel a balance with my emotional rational and my logical rational that I think I can put my thoughts into place.

The beginning is when I wanted to end. For the second time I had just gotten out of the Behavioral Health Unit- or as I lovingly call it, the loony bin. I had learned a lot of coping mechanisms and received med changes so that I could step back into my life without wanting to run away from it. I didn’t care that I had missed Christmas with my family. I was just happy to be holding onto my husband and I was filled with hope and determination to face my post-partum depression, social anxiety, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder head on. Instead of getting the opportunity to see myself overcome the monthly mental challenges, I instead got the wonderful news that I was pregnant for the second time.

Calling your mental health doctor who you talked to only a couple weeks ago about putting off having kids and informing him that you’re pregnant is not pleasant. Nor is the excited congratulations from his secretary. That week, when I was informing people who needed to know that I was on medications and figuring out what was safe for me and the tiny little fetus that decided to take up residence, I wanted to scream at people “this is not something to be happy about! What is wrong with you people?” 

Pregnancy, for me, sucks. I hate it. It is my literal Hell. Now true, on average, I haven’t been nearly as aggressive or snide, but I’ve also had more low periods that are hard to get out of. But the dread of another bout of months of sleepless nights, trying to take care of a tiny dictator who will never say thank you (not that my toddler, who can speak, says thank you either) on top of caring for my other tiny dictator and myself- well wouldn’t any sane person want to avoid that? Wouldn’t any sane person want to avoid feeling like a slave to two unforgiving, unrelenting, selfish tyrants? But apparently I’m the crazy one and I should be excited for having two “miracles” in my life.

Now I admit, growing up I wanted kids. But I never wanted to be a stay at home mom. I need social interactions. I need to feel like I am contributing to society and making the world a better place. That’s why I want to teach. Depression and feeling like I can barely take care of myself, let alone keep two tiny humans alive, doesn’t exactly make me feel like I am accomplishing much of anything.

That’s why I’m jealous my husband gets to go to work and do something that has absolutely nothing to do with repeating “We don’t throw hard things,” or “I will give you more once you’ve finished what’s on your tray” all day long. That’s why I’m jealous that even though we’re both parents- he’s the one with the degree. He has all the doors open to him- grad school, job opportunities, etc. While I feel chained to a job I didn’t want, but can’t leave.

To put it simply, to me, everyone is a demigod on their heroic epic journey filled with monsters and triumphs- and I am the cursed titan Sisyphus who gets to roll a giant rock up the hill, only for it to fall back to the base again for all eternity.  

Right now, I’m miserable enough with this pregnancy but I’m not looking forward to having a newborn, so my first instinct is to just avoid thinking about it at all and thus bake until all the flour and sugar is gone. But baking doesn’t remove the baby from my uterus, or whisk away the monotony of caring for a toddler. Baking, though satisfying, sadly, does not do anything more than having something for me to snack on while I sit here and panic and desperately wish to run away and start life somewhere else. A life where I can be free, without kids and without the expectations to just “suck it up” and face the consequences of being a female with efficient reproductive organs.

I’ve been living with the guilt of not having better birth control since I took the pregnancy test. I live with the guilt of bringing my first tiny human into the world only for me and him to be burden because my mind decided that it doesn’t know how to cope anymore. I am ashamed that I don’t have the energy or the will to be the kind of mom I wanted to be and instead am a mom who does the bare minimum because that’s all I can do.

But sadly, I can’t run away. One, I’d stick out because I am still unabashedly pregnant. And two, I know that leaving isn’t the answer, no matter what my emotional logic says. As a wise baboon once said, “yes the past can hurt. But you can either run from it, or learn from it.” I will be completely honest and tell you I have no idea what good I’ve learned from two miserable pregnancies and facing the realities of depression. My first thoughts are all along the lines of “Don’t have kids, ever”, “set aside money for a really great nanny if the first lesson didn’t stick”, and “be prepared for isolation unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.”

I don’t really have a positive note to end on, mostly because I don’t know how this chapter in my story ends. I don’t know if having a baby will switch my hormones and what's wrong will be fixed. I don’t know if I’ll sink lower and have another stay in the loony bin. I don’t know if I’ll find joy or if all of my fears will come true. Whatever happens, I’m still doing my best to avoid it because I still can’t shake this gut instinct to bake every single recipe on my Pinterest board. I guess the one positive is that baking isn't usually a cause of concern for those with mental health issues.  

When Suicide Makes Sense

Where is that light at the end of the tunnel that everyone talks about?

I don’t believe it exists.

Every day I wake up wondering why I’m even here. 

I know people love me. I know people care.

 But the fact is that I don’t care.

I don’t see a hope in the years or even months to come- what is there?  I mean people ask what they can do to help. But what does helping do, really? It just prolongs the torture of living another day, just filling it with distractions- but they don’t turn off the thoughts in my head. I can’t sleep unless I stare at a screen until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.

So I ask- why is it at all worth it?

….

I wrote that on November 28th, in an attempt to write a blog post all about when suicide makes sense to someone with a mental illness. However, I found that writing these words were too scary for me to share with the world. I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want to try because I felt overwhelmed, isolated, and I couldn’t see any light or any hope of a future where there wasn’t anything but unbearable pain.

I told Richard this. I cried when I told him I had started looking up ways to end my life. I told him about how tempting it was to jump off the nearest bridge or step in front of a speeding bus. Anything that would be quick and fast, and, hopefully, painless because I was already drowning in indescribable mental pain.

I was sleeping during the day. I would go to bed at 4 am and woke up around 4 pm only to sit and play the same four phone games over and over again, distracting myself from feeling anything. If I did something like made dinner, or bake, it was a rare and mostly out of obligation because I said I would. I hardly interacted with my son and for a while I didn’t want him to feel the pain I did and felt that taking him out of this miserable existence that’s called life would be far kinder than letting him live with a broken mother.

This, my friends, is all emotional logic. When someone is in this state, they really are a danger to themselves, and in my case, a danger to others. I was too tired of trying and yet I was spending all of what little energy I had to find a way end my life. No, suicide isn’t rationally logical. It appears selfish, cruel, throwing all the love and support that our friends and family give us back in their face. 

 Because we are so stuck in our own heads and hurt so much that all we can see is the shadows of pain.

I did talk to my psychiatrist and I did agree that the best thing for me was to go to the emergency room.

So the next morning I went. I didn’t actually make it to the behavioral health unit until late afternoon, but I was there. The first group therapy meeting was all about optimism. And oh my gosh was that hard. Everything he was saying about staying optimistic, just letting things slide off you, find the happy. And it all just sounded so stupid. I didn’t want to listen, and yet a part of me really wanted to believe that what he was saying was true. I knew I was sitting on the emotional fence of do I give into the depression, or do I fight it. I admit it, I cried. Full on sobs, trying not to look at anyone in the eyes as I balled my eyes out. Of course I made the therapist in charge of the group think that he offended me in some way. He didn’t of course, it was just the conversation in my head of admitting whether or not I wanted to be stuck in a place where my hair matched the teal hospital scrubs they gave me.

I was anxious and scared and it was hard to fall asleep. I did sleep, for a little bit, maybe an hour or so, before I was wide awake all over again.

As I sat there, I realized I had no phone to distract me from the pain and the feelings I usually shove away and hide until they overwhelm me. I didn’t have a computer or a television or ipad to offer me an alternate universe where I could just hide. So I stared wide awake at my dim lights on my hospital ceiling and thought about why I was even there.

And then I felt it. Just a small tiny flicker of hope. Hope that I could get better. Hope that I wasn’t completely forgotten by my Heavenly Father, or what others may call the force of the universe. And I felt overwhelmed, but this time it was overwhelming gratitude. Gratitude that there was a safe place for me to go. Gratitude that I live in a time where mental illness is treated with understanding and respect by doctors, and not like an act of demonic possession. I was grateful for my husband and his understanding, support, and strength as he held my hand and brought me books to read while I worked on the icky that has been plaguing me for so long.

I now dub it my 3 AM epiphany. It was that moment in time where it felt like the weight of the world finally slipped off my shoulders and I could breathe light again. I could see that even though I was a mom who struggled with blaming my son for my mental condition (logically untrue, but still felt totally emotionally true), even though I tried to spend as little time as possible with him, he still smiled. He still made eye contact and crawled and pulls himself up and explores. He is a healthy and happy child despite my lack of being a “good” mother.

The phrase, “make your own definition of success” came to my mind and I thought about how the definition of perfect is always changing. But as a linguist and history major in training I remembered that in Hebrew the word perfect means complete. A complete person doesn’t have to look or talk, walk, dress, think, or act like another person. A complete person does the best they can, the best way they know how, and when they make mistakes they learn from them. That night I took the teeny tiny pencils they allowed us to have and wrote in big capital letters- FAIL and made this small sign that was proudly displayed in my room for the rest of my stay.

Fresh

Attempt

In

Learning

It was then I could finally go back to sleep. For the rest of the days I was in there we talked about the hard things, I made friends with everyone in the unit- nurses, techs, therapists, psychiatrists, and most of all my fellow patients. I just wanted to hug them all and tell them that they were loved and important- but it was hard to tell that and accept that myself.

To be honest, I filled most of my time with coloring, reading, therapy, and making paper cranes. I gave them to everyone reminding them that the crane was a symbol of good luck and made the analogy that sometimes we feel like a beat up piece of paper. We get folded and bent into awkward shapes, and sometimes pressed really hard, but then we find out that all those folds and presses were what made us into a beautiful crane.

I pray for those lovely people every day. I wish that I could heal the scars on their arms, still their anxious bodies so they can sleep, help them see the strength and power that they have to pull themselves out of their horrible living conditions. But I don’t have the mental health wand, sadly. So instead I told jokes, complimented them, and asked them to tell me stories- especially when I knew it brought out their brightest smiles.

Like one of the therapists said, “It’s kind of ironic for a person like me to be in there.”  But it’s not. Sometimes the people who are really good at making others feel good, don’t feel like they have a person like themselves that will help carry their burdens, help make them laugh, help them when they don’t believe that there is even a light in this stupid dark tunnel. So I got to read “The Gift of Imperfection” by Brene Brown.

So I happily did all my paperwork, ate my meals, socialized, went to all the group therapy sessions, and took my meds and four days later I came home.

But that’s not where the story ends.

See, day one of being back, I was good. I got a lot done. I made lunch and dinner. I took care of Corbin. I went and talked about my experience at the BHU and told him all about my 3 AM epiphany. I told him all of the things I was going to do to help keep me out of the rut I got stuck in.

But it’s now been a week since I’ve got home. Things have not gone according to plan. I still try 

every day, I find a whole lot more joy in things than I did two weeks ago, but oh man it is hard admitting that I’m still human.

I wanted to be fixed. I wanted to go back to my pre marriage life where I was in perfect condition for finishing school and going on to doing important things like teaching students, as well as being a good mom and wife. Yet as the week went on I found that though I have hope, I don’t know what I have hope in.

I didn’t answer these questions: “How will I feel like a successful person (not just a mom)?” “What am I supposed to do when I’m home alone with my son while Richard finds a job and finishes school?” “What is it exactly that I look forward to when I wake up every morning?”

In the BHU it’s easy to answer those questions because I saw it as a personal vacation to really reflect and recharge. So how will I feel like a success? My psychiatrist will tell me when it’s time to go home. What am I going to do when I get home? Love my son and husband. What do I look forward to every morning? Seeing my husband during visiting hours.

See? Easy.

But now that I am home and dealing with the reality that I felt way too overconfident in my capabilities of calling someone every day, doing chores around the house, taking care of my son, or address the icky yucky feelings and anxiety that weren’t really resolved.

So I sit. And I write. And I try to think through how I’m feeling and working on allowing myself to feel the icky without it needing to stick to me forever because other icky things might come by and be even ickier.

I would apologize that I didn’t have a happier note to end on. I wish that I could say that because of my 3 AM epiphany I finally was able to feel healed and move on. But that’s not how things work, at least not for me. It’s still taking life one day at a time, and some moments one hour at a time. 

Parenting and Depression

When you blame your child for your mental state, it’s really hard to talk about parenthood.

I know that my son is not at fault for the change in my hormones, my lack of interest in anything, my inability to concentrate, my lack of appetite, or my feelings of worthlessness. Those are all just symptoms of a much bigger issue that was triggered by pregnancy, not by the human that was created.

However, that still doesn’t stop the demons in my head telling me that if I had never been pregnant or had a baby, then I wouldn’t be so messed up.  It doesn’t stop me from hating myself for getting pregnant in the first place and hating my body for being so functionally feminine.

But you know what it does, it makes it really hard for me to really bond with my son. Sure, I play with him, feed him, sing him silly songs, read him stories- but I’d do that with any child. It’s the lack of concern I feel when I’m far away from him. It’s the frustration that I am just “the bringer of food” (since I don’t breastfeed anymore) to him. It’s the thought that if I had the option to just leave him and all his stuff on someone’s doorstep without any consequences, I totally would.

When I was asked by my doctor if I could take something off my plate, what would it be?

My answer was Motherhood.

I am not the individual that at the end of the day just knows without a doubt that they love their child/children. I am not the woman who thinks that my child “is my whole world” and “couldn’t think of what I’d ever do without him”. Trust me. I can totally think of all the things I would be doing without my son. And I am still convinced that I would be a lot healthier and happier if he didn’t exist.

And so I sit here. And I be the “best” parent I can be with the way my brain allows me to function right now. I take it one day at a time and lately one hour at a time. Because it wouldn’t be socially acceptable for me to leave him on a doorstep and just walk away. Because my family would probably hate me if one day my son was no longer there for them to coo at and play with. Because the world keeps reminding me that my son is supposed to be my “calling”, “blessing”, or “greatest joy that life can bring” (I hate all of those “inspirational” posts. They just make me angry). I won’t even go into the expectations of giving my son siblings (which if you’re going to poke your nose, the answer is: I didn’t know my sex life was any of your business.)

 So what is parenthood like when you can’t bring yourself to love your child? The demons in my head tell me that loving my child is admitting that I like being miserable. By loving my child I accept that my only role in life is being a successful statistic of female reproduction.

What parenthood looks like on the outside is just doing the basics- feed, change, put down for a nap, and repeat. On good days, there may be some songs and reading time. But on average he gets the basics and plays in his walker because I haven’t had the energy to baby proof the apartment. Perhaps one day we’ll have a good relationship. Until then, I do what I can so we both survive.

The hardest part is asking for help, because someone may have offered on a good mental day for me, but on the bad days, I just feel guilty- because the weight of responsibility is on my shoulders and I should be better than this. It’s hard asking for help because I don’t want to be so dependent on others that they feel like I take advantage of them. It’s hard because I don’t need people judging how bad of a mom I am, because I am already well aware of that, thank you. It’s so much easier to just let my son sit and scream in the other room (when he’s inconsolable after a changing, feeding, cuddling, and pain meds if he’s teething) while I blast my favorite music on headphones.

Perhaps one day we’ll have a good relationship. Until then, I do what I can so we both survive.