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hippybngstockngOne of those things that's been kicking around in my head to write about for months now is Post Partum Depression and Post Partum Psychosis. With Andrea Yates finally having gone through her re-trial, now seems like as good a time as any to have a smack at it.. Even if you're not a parent, I hope you will read this, because I feel like it's as important an issue for anyone who knows a mom who might be suffering to be aware of it.
Yesterday was a really bad day for me. I woke up in a dark place and pretty much stayed there all day. That means that I spent most of the day just kinda noodling around on the internet, barely actually talking to anyone, watching TV and dealing with K's needs on a moment to moment basis. His day had started with a deep desire to watch Muppets from Space, at which point he told me, "BYE MOMMY!" over and over, and being that I was in a big ol' funk, I went with that. The problem is that we spend too many days like this, especially these days. He's not learning anything from me, except for how to work the VCR, I'm not doing anything except feeling sad, and yeah, while none of that is dangerous, it's also NOT a good thing. We did try to go to the park eventually, but it was too fucking hot, so we came home and watched more TV. Many days we don't even make it to the park.
Now all of a sudden-like you all know my big secret, or at least those of you who didn't know it already suddenly do.. I still suffer from some pretty serious depression at times, and not shockingly it can make me a not-so-hot mother. Mind you I am never neglectful, so not really awful, but I am HELLA lame... There's not too much of a good reason for it. My stress is just like anyone else's stress, maybe only a little bonus with K having ASD, or hell, maybe even less since I never have to sit around for hours of heavy philosophical WHY conversations, since K is still having issues with interacting in general. My life is fucking easy compared to lots of the world, and yet I can still manage to be utterly miserable a good deal of the time, so I know this must be medical. I'm a good person, so in my heart I want to rush right into the doctor's office and deal with it straight away, but there's a crap-load of reasons why I can't do that right now without making life EXTREMELY hard, so I just suffer through it.
What does this have to do with PPD and PPP? Well, it's just that I've been noticing that a lot of what goes on with me fits into every description of it, just about, STILL, after 5 years. When I hear people talk about it on the TV and on the net I start to get really upset about how stupid and ignorant some people are about it. I had a conversation a while back with a really good friend of mine from way back who tried to tell me that he didn't think it actually exists, that it's a societal side effect of our Western culture because women are not supported properly by family and community. I would agree that Western society doesn't properly support women and their children, but I would NOT agree that simply supporting women would magically make PPD and PPP not exist. I could tell his heart was in the right place with what he was saying, but it still brought up this giant fire in my belly that I wanted to spit on him and everyone else in a 50ft radius.
You see, the problem is shame. Shame and ignorance. People don't think PPD and PPP exist because women are too ashamed to admit it, and constantly made to feel even MORE ashamed if they do. We're all supposed to love this motherhood thing, unless we're whores or crack addicts, since motherhood is such a laugh riot party of constant fun and all, right? Wrong. Well, even if motherhood isn't a 24/7 trip to Chuck E. Cheese, why can't women just suck it up for about 14 years and just deal? Well, I can't answer that, or I'D HAVE FUCKING SUCKED IT UP ALREADY AND HAVE DEALT WITH IT. I'm very smart. If anyone could just suck something so simple up into my wee tiny brain and dealt with it, it would have been me. I haven't done that, so I would have to say that maybe we should reevaluate the sucking and dealing approach since clearly it's not working for anyone. Even people who have ALL the help can get to the bad bad place...
And so I come back to Andrea Yates.
Since the beginning of that whole story, I've felt like the only person in the world who truly understands her pain and what she did. Even after I heard the truly brutal details of it all, I still felt for her. I know I wasn't really alone in this feeling, but it's clearly a hard thing for anyone to talk about openly- How do you tell people you feel sympathy for a child killer? Some people are going to assume, because they have trouble thinking things through, that you would support the killing of children, or that you might even be capable of killing your own child. That suggestion is just as stupid as the idea that people who support AIDS victims are all gay, and will all get AIDS.
I support Andrea Yates because I know I've likely felt a large amount of the same things that she's felt (with the possible exception of all the religious stuff, since I was never very religious and don't really believe in Hell), and while I don't think I would be capable of doing any of it, I could see how given the right amount of neglect and the right amount of crazy, I could. And boy howdy does that scare me. If I felt just a little more shame and anguish than I do right now, and I had less support than I have, then yeah.. I don't think I would choose to drown K in the bathtub, but I could definitely see myself waiting until just before Crash was about to get home from work, putting a really enthralling video in the VCR for K, leaving an apologetic suicide note, and then taking myself out someplace nice and quietly shooting myself in the face. Not so much to end my pain even, as to save them from having to suffer it too.
Why? I know, I'm a good person, I have lots going for me, yada yada blah blah blah.. Life is great and so on. This can be fixed. Yep, I know all that too, but it doesn't stop the loud stinking awful that goes on in my head all the fricking time anyway. I just want it to stop. I'd give everything to make it stop. The fact that I don't do it has more to do with how much I absolutely KNOW it would ruin K, and especially wreck Crash's soul, since he'd then be left holding all the bags and all the keys and driving the bus and everything at the same time, and then my mom would try to jump in and HELP him, oh god... So yeah, TRUST ME when I say that NO I WOULD NEVER EVER EVER KILL MYSELF because I am most thoroughly aware of the ramifications of this as a selfish act.
ANYWAY. The point is that I REALLY know the dark place. I don't think that anyone who hasn't been through this particular dark place is really going to get it. Even reading through some of the symptoms can make some people screw their faces up and wonder how ANYONE who has lived in the world for longer than a day could EVER think such terrible things about themselves or their offspring, but it absolutely happens.
So yeah, back to Andrea Yates. Last night I watched about half (the last half) of some new-ish network segment relating to her where they showed some of the 14 hours of interviews with her and her lawyer about what happened in her head. It was just chilling to me, I watched like a deer in headlights. I felt even more what I've felt before. I can even see where if my life had taken a very different turn and I had stuck with being a Christian I might even be in the exact SAME place as her. I spent a lot of the time listening to her talk and being so thankful I had seen this aspect of myself early, and decided after it happened with K that it would be wholly unwise for me to think about having another child. We all know about the mistakes that were made in her life. She was not doing well way back at her first or second child, and then was still encouraged to have more, and then her family, knowing full well she was not supposed to be left alone went and left her alone anyway.. People say that she must be faking it because she took advantage of the first opportunity to end her pain, but I don't believe that. Life is full of opportunities to end things, I think she waited as long as she was capable because the help she was getting wasn't working, and she was far too ashamed to admit it.
People don't understand how hard it is to admit these things. It doesn't make any sense to me that I can be as mature and responsible and smart as I am, and still wake up some days and truly feel incapable of doing even simple things like getting dressed and going for a walk outside. Clothes are good, outside is pretty, and walking is good for you. I can't help but spend hours thinking about it, and judging myself for it, as harshly as if I was CPS and Martha Stewart rolled into a giant unhappy sandwich. I know what I should be doing, I know how it's done, and I am simply not. There are no lead weights on my feet, I am physically capable, but alas, the idea of doing most of the things I need to do makes me want to cry and run away. There are days I am honestly afraid of speaking to my child, lest I damage him in some way. I feel having me in his life has doomed him, and me, and we are all just waiting for the big doomy end. I don't blame him, or Crash, or anyone (except maybe my mom for having me in the first place), I truly feel it's me, how could it NOT be me, since they clearly don't feel this way at all, and life is actually pretty much fine. I am just wrong somehow. I am not fit to be here in this moment. I should be somewhere else, being punished. Just like Andrea, I feel like I should be in Hell with frigging Ted Bundy.
I heard Andrea say all those same kinds of things, and a couple more that sounded eerily familiar, and then one more thing that finally made me cry... I can't quote it exactly, but she said that she's the woman that the whole world hates. Golly how that hurt. I don't hate her at all, but I understand how she feels that way. She will likely never stop feeling that way because even if people tell her she is forgiven, she can never take back what she did, and she knows there is no logical way that she will even understand what she's done, so there's no way she will ever be able to forgive herself. She will always hold herself in a place of hate for what she's done, and there might be more people saying they understand now, but that doesn't stop them from hating her anyway.
And I feel that too, that the only things that separates me from her is that I have managed to let my logical side win in all things. Even knowing what I know, it's just hard to believe that anyone could still love me knowing that I can get to feeling like a complete monster at times, and that I can allow myself to feel so much doom about my own child, even as smart and knowing of things as I am. Even though I know lots of you have known me forever, and would never believe I could be so evil, I get to thinking that saying these things will change your mind about that. Even though I talk about it openly, it still feels like MY BIG SECRET, I guess simply because of the fact that it's been 5 FUCKING YEARS and this shit still hasn't gone away. It's not every damn day anymore, and when I can improve the stress-triggering aspects of life, it DOES fade more, but it's never completely gone. The memory is always there, the doubt, the suspicious feeling of absence. I count moments I don't feel awful as happy moments to make it clear to myself that there's no good reasons, only perceptions, and my perceptions are clearly broken. I've cobbled together a bunch of logic and love and that's how I get by. I feel so badly that Andrea wasn't able to do that, and that her children suffered so tragically as a result of it, and it makes me ill to think about how many other women are probably out there feeling the same things. I have so much fear for the women who now WON'T come forward and ask for help because of all the stupidity being thrown around about what Andrea did to end her pain. Women need help with this problem, but admitting you have it fills you with so much shame because of how simple it all seems, not to begin to even mention how much you agree with the people who will hate you if you admit you're magically incapable of even the simplest of things.
What needs to happen is that the world needs to wake up and realize that passing judgement on mothers is not the way to get them to improve their situations. There's no shame in not being a math genius, so there should be no shame in not being the best mother either, and yet regularly it happens. There's nothing more shameful than being perceived as a "bad mother" except being perceived as a child molester. To have to admit to someone that you feel you're potentially a danger to your child is to invite them to do a shit-load of really terrifying things to you, right up to taking your child away, never to be seen again. This is not a blame-free environment we're talking about here.. If you tell someone you're doing a bad job, they're going to ask you how and why. If you're brave enough to be honest, I am betting you'd be screwed on the spot, since the person hearing your confessions usually has more power than you, and if they fail to understand the really crucial part of it, that you really don't WANT this, that you'd really love nothing more than to wake up one morning to find you've mutated into Donna Reed, they're going to feel like you should yield any further power or control over your life, usually to them. You better hope they're not scary...
It's much easier to go the way of women through the centuries. Just wait, see if it will pass, suffer in silence, put on a happy face, whistle a happy tune, watch a little more TV, eat a little more ice cream, pretend it's not happening, wait until your husband comes home from work and try to sleep until you can't anymore, if you're lucky enough to have sleep, and a husband...
I ask you though, is this really the way you want your mothers to feel? Your sisters? Doesn't it feel so wrong it makes you want to cry? Well then.. Let's stop pretending then, and cry, because it IS wrong, and it needs to stop. It's way too late to save Andrea Yates, but it's not too late to learn from this, so let's all learn something, okay? Thanks...
That's all I got to say about that...
As for me, today is clearly a better day. I'm forming complete sentences, and even posting honestly for the first time in a long time, so that's good. I think I have to thank fruit, which means I should really go buy more today and then make sure I eat it. Much of the recent problems I've been having could be related to the fact that food shopping has been failing to happen consistently, and therefor eating has turned into a really random affair involving bad diet choices, especially with starch and sugar. Both those things mess with my head.
It should also be noted that I talk to Crash about all this depression related stuff regularly, so it's not like I am ever completely alone and miserable in secret. While I may play it down to him at times to keep him from worrying too much, I never lie and say I am okay when I am not. We talk about it all the time, and we're working on dealing with it as quickly as we can, and doing everything else in the mean time that's possible to keep it from being a problem. We're just not at a place where it'd be smart to get lots of the help I really need... Let me just sum up about that when I say that it wouldn't really help my status as an immigrant if Canada knew they were letting in yet another loon... ;)
I just don't want you guys to worry about me. I'll be okay. Yes, I'm sad a lot of the time, and I could probably use a babysitter for me as much as my son, but I'll get there. I've also been dealing with some form of depression most of my life, so I'm not new at dealing with it. I'm never a danger to myself or anyone else. I have too much of an overwhelming sense of responsibility for that. It helps a lot that K is going to day care as much as he is, and that the grandmas are going to start helping us by paying for even more days just to get him acclimated to the idea of going to school every day. I've got a lot of space in which to work on this on my own with my big brain, and try to make sure I keep my energy stores as high as possible to battle every day. I had a whole bunch of good days a while back, before we moved, so I know I can get there again. I'm just not there right now, but I'll get there.
And I know I don't really need to apologize for it, but I know this all makes me a lousy friend sometimes too, and I really am sorry for that. I'm so stuck in the backwash of my own head that I can't make sense of myself to come out and support others that I really want to. I can't say things I really want to when it would be meaningful, and I wait, and then it becomes meaningless and I feel guilty about that too. You probably all think I don't care sometimes, that I'm not listening anymore.. I am, I'm just so clogged up I can't help right now, but that doesn't mean I love you any less. I love all my friends, and I support you too, and I'm proud of all of you, warts and all... :)
Yesterday was a really bad day for me. I woke up in a dark place and pretty much stayed there all day. That means that I spent most of the day just kinda noodling around on the internet, barely actually talking to anyone, watching TV and dealing with K's needs on a moment to moment basis. His day had started with a deep desire to watch Muppets from Space, at which point he told me, "BYE MOMMY!" over and over, and being that I was in a big ol' funk, I went with that. The problem is that we spend too many days like this, especially these days. He's not learning anything from me, except for how to work the VCR, I'm not doing anything except feeling sad, and yeah, while none of that is dangerous, it's also NOT a good thing. We did try to go to the park eventually, but it was too fucking hot, so we came home and watched more TV. Many days we don't even make it to the park.
Now all of a sudden-like you all know my big secret, or at least those of you who didn't know it already suddenly do.. I still suffer from some pretty serious depression at times, and not shockingly it can make me a not-so-hot mother. Mind you I am never neglectful, so not really awful, but I am HELLA lame... There's not too much of a good reason for it. My stress is just like anyone else's stress, maybe only a little bonus with K having ASD, or hell, maybe even less since I never have to sit around for hours of heavy philosophical WHY conversations, since K is still having issues with interacting in general. My life is fucking easy compared to lots of the world, and yet I can still manage to be utterly miserable a good deal of the time, so I know this must be medical. I'm a good person, so in my heart I want to rush right into the doctor's office and deal with it straight away, but there's a crap-load of reasons why I can't do that right now without making life EXTREMELY hard, so I just suffer through it.
What does this have to do with PPD and PPP? Well, it's just that I've been noticing that a lot of what goes on with me fits into every description of it, just about, STILL, after 5 years. When I hear people talk about it on the TV and on the net I start to get really upset about how stupid and ignorant some people are about it. I had a conversation a while back with a really good friend of mine from way back who tried to tell me that he didn't think it actually exists, that it's a societal side effect of our Western culture because women are not supported properly by family and community. I would agree that Western society doesn't properly support women and their children, but I would NOT agree that simply supporting women would magically make PPD and PPP not exist. I could tell his heart was in the right place with what he was saying, but it still brought up this giant fire in my belly that I wanted to spit on him and everyone else in a 50ft radius.
You see, the problem is shame. Shame and ignorance. People don't think PPD and PPP exist because women are too ashamed to admit it, and constantly made to feel even MORE ashamed if they do. We're all supposed to love this motherhood thing, unless we're whores or crack addicts, since motherhood is such a laugh riot party of constant fun and all, right? Wrong. Well, even if motherhood isn't a 24/7 trip to Chuck E. Cheese, why can't women just suck it up for about 14 years and just deal? Well, I can't answer that, or I'D HAVE FUCKING SUCKED IT UP ALREADY AND HAVE DEALT WITH IT. I'm very smart. If anyone could just suck something so simple up into my wee tiny brain and dealt with it, it would have been me. I haven't done that, so I would have to say that maybe we should reevaluate the sucking and dealing approach since clearly it's not working for anyone. Even people who have ALL the help can get to the bad bad place...
And so I come back to Andrea Yates.
Since the beginning of that whole story, I've felt like the only person in the world who truly understands her pain and what she did. Even after I heard the truly brutal details of it all, I still felt for her. I know I wasn't really alone in this feeling, but it's clearly a hard thing for anyone to talk about openly- How do you tell people you feel sympathy for a child killer? Some people are going to assume, because they have trouble thinking things through, that you would support the killing of children, or that you might even be capable of killing your own child. That suggestion is just as stupid as the idea that people who support AIDS victims are all gay, and will all get AIDS.
I support Andrea Yates because I know I've likely felt a large amount of the same things that she's felt (with the possible exception of all the religious stuff, since I was never very religious and don't really believe in Hell), and while I don't think I would be capable of doing any of it, I could see how given the right amount of neglect and the right amount of crazy, I could. And boy howdy does that scare me. If I felt just a little more shame and anguish than I do right now, and I had less support than I have, then yeah.. I don't think I would choose to drown K in the bathtub, but I could definitely see myself waiting until just before Crash was about to get home from work, putting a really enthralling video in the VCR for K, leaving an apologetic suicide note, and then taking myself out someplace nice and quietly shooting myself in the face. Not so much to end my pain even, as to save them from having to suffer it too.
Why? I know, I'm a good person, I have lots going for me, yada yada blah blah blah.. Life is great and so on. This can be fixed. Yep, I know all that too, but it doesn't stop the loud stinking awful that goes on in my head all the fricking time anyway. I just want it to stop. I'd give everything to make it stop. The fact that I don't do it has more to do with how much I absolutely KNOW it would ruin K, and especially wreck Crash's soul, since he'd then be left holding all the bags and all the keys and driving the bus and everything at the same time, and then my mom would try to jump in and HELP him, oh god... So yeah, TRUST ME when I say that NO I WOULD NEVER EVER EVER KILL MYSELF because I am most thoroughly aware of the ramifications of this as a selfish act.
ANYWAY. The point is that I REALLY know the dark place. I don't think that anyone who hasn't been through this particular dark place is really going to get it. Even reading through some of the symptoms can make some people screw their faces up and wonder how ANYONE who has lived in the world for longer than a day could EVER think such terrible things about themselves or their offspring, but it absolutely happens.
So yeah, back to Andrea Yates. Last night I watched about half (the last half) of some new-ish network segment relating to her where they showed some of the 14 hours of interviews with her and her lawyer about what happened in her head. It was just chilling to me, I watched like a deer in headlights. I felt even more what I've felt before. I can even see where if my life had taken a very different turn and I had stuck with being a Christian I might even be in the exact SAME place as her. I spent a lot of the time listening to her talk and being so thankful I had seen this aspect of myself early, and decided after it happened with K that it would be wholly unwise for me to think about having another child. We all know about the mistakes that were made in her life. She was not doing well way back at her first or second child, and then was still encouraged to have more, and then her family, knowing full well she was not supposed to be left alone went and left her alone anyway.. People say that she must be faking it because she took advantage of the first opportunity to end her pain, but I don't believe that. Life is full of opportunities to end things, I think she waited as long as she was capable because the help she was getting wasn't working, and she was far too ashamed to admit it.
People don't understand how hard it is to admit these things. It doesn't make any sense to me that I can be as mature and responsible and smart as I am, and still wake up some days and truly feel incapable of doing even simple things like getting dressed and going for a walk outside. Clothes are good, outside is pretty, and walking is good for you. I can't help but spend hours thinking about it, and judging myself for it, as harshly as if I was CPS and Martha Stewart rolled into a giant unhappy sandwich. I know what I should be doing, I know how it's done, and I am simply not. There are no lead weights on my feet, I am physically capable, but alas, the idea of doing most of the things I need to do makes me want to cry and run away. There are days I am honestly afraid of speaking to my child, lest I damage him in some way. I feel having me in his life has doomed him, and me, and we are all just waiting for the big doomy end. I don't blame him, or Crash, or anyone (except maybe my mom for having me in the first place), I truly feel it's me, how could it NOT be me, since they clearly don't feel this way at all, and life is actually pretty much fine. I am just wrong somehow. I am not fit to be here in this moment. I should be somewhere else, being punished. Just like Andrea, I feel like I should be in Hell with frigging Ted Bundy.
I heard Andrea say all those same kinds of things, and a couple more that sounded eerily familiar, and then one more thing that finally made me cry... I can't quote it exactly, but she said that she's the woman that the whole world hates. Golly how that hurt. I don't hate her at all, but I understand how she feels that way. She will likely never stop feeling that way because even if people tell her she is forgiven, she can never take back what she did, and she knows there is no logical way that she will even understand what she's done, so there's no way she will ever be able to forgive herself. She will always hold herself in a place of hate for what she's done, and there might be more people saying they understand now, but that doesn't stop them from hating her anyway.
And I feel that too, that the only things that separates me from her is that I have managed to let my logical side win in all things. Even knowing what I know, it's just hard to believe that anyone could still love me knowing that I can get to feeling like a complete monster at times, and that I can allow myself to feel so much doom about my own child, even as smart and knowing of things as I am. Even though I know lots of you have known me forever, and would never believe I could be so evil, I get to thinking that saying these things will change your mind about that. Even though I talk about it openly, it still feels like MY BIG SECRET, I guess simply because of the fact that it's been 5 FUCKING YEARS and this shit still hasn't gone away. It's not every damn day anymore, and when I can improve the stress-triggering aspects of life, it DOES fade more, but it's never completely gone. The memory is always there, the doubt, the suspicious feeling of absence. I count moments I don't feel awful as happy moments to make it clear to myself that there's no good reasons, only perceptions, and my perceptions are clearly broken. I've cobbled together a bunch of logic and love and that's how I get by. I feel so badly that Andrea wasn't able to do that, and that her children suffered so tragically as a result of it, and it makes me ill to think about how many other women are probably out there feeling the same things. I have so much fear for the women who now WON'T come forward and ask for help because of all the stupidity being thrown around about what Andrea did to end her pain. Women need help with this problem, but admitting you have it fills you with so much shame because of how simple it all seems, not to begin to even mention how much you agree with the people who will hate you if you admit you're magically incapable of even the simplest of things.
What needs to happen is that the world needs to wake up and realize that passing judgement on mothers is not the way to get them to improve their situations. There's no shame in not being a math genius, so there should be no shame in not being the best mother either, and yet regularly it happens. There's nothing more shameful than being perceived as a "bad mother" except being perceived as a child molester. To have to admit to someone that you feel you're potentially a danger to your child is to invite them to do a shit-load of really terrifying things to you, right up to taking your child away, never to be seen again. This is not a blame-free environment we're talking about here.. If you tell someone you're doing a bad job, they're going to ask you how and why. If you're brave enough to be honest, I am betting you'd be screwed on the spot, since the person hearing your confessions usually has more power than you, and if they fail to understand the really crucial part of it, that you really don't WANT this, that you'd really love nothing more than to wake up one morning to find you've mutated into Donna Reed, they're going to feel like you should yield any further power or control over your life, usually to them. You better hope they're not scary...
It's much easier to go the way of women through the centuries. Just wait, see if it will pass, suffer in silence, put on a happy face, whistle a happy tune, watch a little more TV, eat a little more ice cream, pretend it's not happening, wait until your husband comes home from work and try to sleep until you can't anymore, if you're lucky enough to have sleep, and a husband...
I ask you though, is this really the way you want your mothers to feel? Your sisters? Doesn't it feel so wrong it makes you want to cry? Well then.. Let's stop pretending then, and cry, because it IS wrong, and it needs to stop. It's way too late to save Andrea Yates, but it's not too late to learn from this, so let's all learn something, okay? Thanks...
That's all I got to say about that...
As for me, today is clearly a better day. I'm forming complete sentences, and even posting honestly for the first time in a long time, so that's good. I think I have to thank fruit, which means I should really go buy more today and then make sure I eat it. Much of the recent problems I've been having could be related to the fact that food shopping has been failing to happen consistently, and therefor eating has turned into a really random affair involving bad diet choices, especially with starch and sugar. Both those things mess with my head.
It should also be noted that I talk to Crash about all this depression related stuff regularly, so it's not like I am ever completely alone and miserable in secret. While I may play it down to him at times to keep him from worrying too much, I never lie and say I am okay when I am not. We talk about it all the time, and we're working on dealing with it as quickly as we can, and doing everything else in the mean time that's possible to keep it from being a problem. We're just not at a place where it'd be smart to get lots of the help I really need... Let me just sum up about that when I say that it wouldn't really help my status as an immigrant if Canada knew they were letting in yet another loon... ;)
I just don't want you guys to worry about me. I'll be okay. Yes, I'm sad a lot of the time, and I could probably use a babysitter for me as much as my son, but I'll get there. I've also been dealing with some form of depression most of my life, so I'm not new at dealing with it. I'm never a danger to myself or anyone else. I have too much of an overwhelming sense of responsibility for that. It helps a lot that K is going to day care as much as he is, and that the grandmas are going to start helping us by paying for even more days just to get him acclimated to the idea of going to school every day. I've got a lot of space in which to work on this on my own with my big brain, and try to make sure I keep my energy stores as high as possible to battle every day. I had a whole bunch of good days a while back, before we moved, so I know I can get there again. I'm just not there right now, but I'll get there.
And I know I don't really need to apologize for it, but I know this all makes me a lousy friend sometimes too, and I really am sorry for that. I'm so stuck in the backwash of my own head that I can't make sense of myself to come out and support others that I really want to. I can't say things I really want to when it would be meaningful, and I wait, and then it becomes meaningless and I feel guilty about that too. You probably all think I don't care sometimes, that I'm not listening anymore.. I am, I'm just so clogged up I can't help right now, but that doesn't mean I love you any less. I love all my friends, and I support you too, and I'm proud of all of you, warts and all... :)
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Date: 2006-07-28 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 06:39 pm (UTC)When I was younger, I was abused & raped by two boyfriends (in series, not in parallel, thankfully).
First therapist - "If you'll just accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour, everything will be fine" Uh - thanks, but clearly we're both wasting each other's time.
Second - "I don't believe you - if that had happened to you, you'd be more broken." Riiiight. Bye, asshole.
Third - "I think you imagined the whole thing, so we'll start there." Ciao.
It's hard.....
*hugs*,hon. FWIW, I get it, and should you need someone to cry at who does get it, lemme know.
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Date: 2006-07-28 06:55 pm (UTC)And yeah, your therapists sound about as bright as the ones I've met. I respect the profession for the most part, but it's awfully hard to feel comfortable when people can deny that you feel the way you feel to your face. I've dumped boyfriends for that, so why would I take that shit from someone I have to PAY???
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Date: 2006-07-28 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 06:30 pm (UTC)I know depression.
Take best care of you you can.
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Date: 2006-07-28 06:41 pm (UTC)You take care of you too.
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Date: 2006-07-28 06:42 pm (UTC)When talking about my history at length with anyone (concerning the children and the circumstances that lead up to my losing them), this always enters my mind and leaks into the conversation. I tell people that I have so much sympathy for Andrea Yates, because I have almost been there. It is then that the person I'm talking to will say something like, "Oh, you are nothing like that, you wouldn't have done that." It makes me angry, because I KNOW how serious my problems were. I remember the thoughts that ran through my head. I remember it all so clearly that it still hurts me and makes me angry. When someone says that, they are invalidating my pain and suffering - because they just don't think that what she did is something I'm capable of.
...but who ever thought that SHE would be capable of doing that??? Is there anyone out there that thinks, "Oh, that Andrea Yates thing - I could see that coming a mile away."
The bottom line is that these people don't know how I felt and what I was thinking and what I was going through. They weren't there, they weren't in my head, they didn't share the fear I felt when I realized the thoughts I was having. It's hard to talk about with most people, because they shrug it off - they don't want to believe that the feelings I had were "that bad".
You should never feel like you need to apologize for who you are (though, I can understand why you would want to, because I feel the need to constantly apologize).
Thanks for sharing, it really did mean a lot to me.
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Date: 2006-07-28 07:00 pm (UTC)"...but who ever thought that SHE would be capable of doing that??? Is there anyone out there that thinks, "Oh, that Andrea Yates thing - I could see that coming a mile away.""
Seriously! But you know, what's creepy is that I have actually heard people use that language, at least in the context that her family should have seen it coming.. I am just not so sure about that either. You always want to believe the best possible things about your family, whether you really truly in your heart believe them or not. You don't want to get caught not having faith in your spouse to do their best, so it's hard to know when that most awful moment will come if someone doesn't say something.. I don't think that her husband or her MIL can be held to that, since if anything ever happened to us, one of the things I would feel the worst about is ANYONE pointing their fingers at Crash and saying, "WHY DIDN'T YOU SEE THIS COMING".. That alone... holy shit... I don't even want to think about it.
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Date: 2006-07-28 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 07:09 pm (UTC)For you?
I love this strip:
http://www.gocomics.com/stonesoup/2006/07/24/
And you have so many things to deal with. Don't downplay the extra stress K causes, he may be 'easier' than some other tot, but he's not 'easy' - no kid is, but yours adds extra worries for now and for his future. Motherhood is hard.
I haven't read all of this (I'm supposed to be working) so I will come back later...
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Date: 2006-07-28 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 09:05 pm (UTC)And it's comforting in how it presents things. I always have the end feeling that everything will turn out okay. Life lite, but that's nice.
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Date: 2006-07-28 07:25 pm (UTC)We keep going back and forth on whether we want to have any children, and I fear being in this same situation if we ever decide to. It's fears like that that keep swaying me toward "no kids never!" I deal with a lot of depression, my husband has recently given in to being medicated for his, but I'm scared to be meditated for mine. And you can't go having a baby while taking depressiong meds either! (at least some of them).
*sigh*
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Date: 2006-07-28 08:18 pm (UTC)That being said, if you're looking for encouragement.. :) I think people with depression can still be good parents, and I have heard that there are some medications you can take during pregnancy, but like you I'd be cautious about it, or just not. I found that most of my problems started AFTER the pregnancy though, so in hindsight if I had decided to feed K formula instead of breastfeeding so I could take all kinds of crazy-head medications at that point, I might have been a lot better off.. So, it's my theory that you could be pregnant and be okay, and then take lots of drugs after and be okay, and it might all be okay! :)
But of course, that's only if you decide you really seriously want to have children. There's a whole other array of downsides outside of depression about that, and it's up to you to decide whether the upsides outweigh them in your personal life.. :)
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Date: 2006-07-28 07:28 pm (UTC)Beyond that, your post really touched me and hit so close to home you cannot begin to know. I wish we lived closer because then both our Ks could hang out and we could lean on each other. *hugs* Stay strong!
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Date: 2006-07-28 07:54 pm (UTC)It's really funny, I had a dream last night in which I figured out that you were my neighbour. I was out getting the mail, and accidentally opened another mailbox (which in real life wouldn't happen because my mailbox is totally on its own). I could tell it was your mail because you had ordered a paper journal with one of your LJ icons as the cover and your username embossed on it, which had just arrived in a see-through plastic sheeting with LJ written all over it. I laughed because I had known you were moving, and I was really happy to discover you were moving next door to me!! :) I know the dream broke up after that, and I think I woke up because I thought about it harder and remembered that you live hundreds of miles away... Still, that's just suddenly weirdly funny to me now that you've said that too, in a good way.. :) The world needs transporters!!
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Date: 2006-07-28 08:27 pm (UTC)I once slapped Ciaran across the face, after he had unbuckled his seat belt while I was driving for the third or fourth time for the purpose of stealing his sister's chocolate milk. It felt SO GOOD. It was deeply satisfying, in a really dangerous way. I knew I could never do that again, because i would have to keep doing it. I knew at that instant that I was capable of child abuse, which I had never thought possible. It happens. We are all human.
I do encourage you to go get help, though. Immigration shouldn't know what happens between you and a doctor. Really. There is no need to suffer with it needlessly. You can do it. At least try St John's Wort or the like, see if that helps. The longer it goes on the harder it is to make it go away. {{hugs}}
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Date: 2006-07-28 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 08:57 pm (UTC)I hope you find what works for you to get out of the hole. Its so hard to be down there staring up at that little bit of sky.
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Date: 2006-07-28 09:36 pm (UTC)But really, don't worry. I know the sky is still there, and it will be there for me when I get out of the hole, I just need to remember where I left that damn ladder.. ;)
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Date: 2006-07-28 09:38 pm (UTC)But definitely, even talking with non-professionals helps a lot. :)
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Date: 2006-07-28 08:47 pm (UTC)I feel the same way all the time, mostly. *big hugs* Thank fuck for LJ huh girl? *love*
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Date: 2006-07-28 09:01 pm (UTC)I think your little monkey is too cute to be doomed, as is mine, so we must be wrong, right? :)
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Date: 2006-07-28 09:47 pm (UTC)Took me twenty nine years to get on meds.
Twenty nine years of feeling like it was all pointless and I was just going through the motions.
I know why it took me so long, but I still don't understand it. Lot of it was what you talk about here.
While the meds don't *feel* like they make that much difference; it's the difference between trying to work in the dark, and having a light turned on in the darkness. Everything is just EASIER.
Don't make it too hard for yourself for too long.
*is sad for you, being sad*
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Date: 2006-07-29 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 07:28 pm (UTC)Anyway, I totally get where you are coming from.
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Date: 2006-07-31 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 08:16 pm (UTC)I don't have kids so the post/pre partum stuff I can't relate to. But I have been depressed and I know how awful it can be. I also know how sometimes it can be worse because everyone treats you like a victim, which just continues to remind you that you have a problem, so on and so forth, 'till you're at the point where you're saying, "If I could just be alone for awhile, to get myh head together, I'll be fine!"
Not much point to this, other than to offer sympathy for a suck situation, and that I know how sometimes you have to help yourself before others can help you.