I needed somewhere to write down a "Dear Diary" essay of my life in the last year, and lo and behold, I have this blog. Hooray! Here's how I went from a happily married pregnant woman, to a depressed mom, to a happy wife and mother on her way to grad school this Fall.
We all have myriad identities. As for me, I'm a young woman, a loved wife, an attentive mom, a spark-of-inspiration writer, a too-thorough-for-my-own-good researcher, a future grad school student, a future college professor, a future author of more than just manuscripts (hey wait a minute, there is that one published story), a lose-myself-to-other-places reader, an eyes-too-big-for-my-hands crafter, an obsessive planner, and a lover of decadent chocolate, alternative coffee brewing methods, and well-plotted novels. I could go on, but I hope, dear reader, you get my point.
When you first have a child, most of your little identities go away for a while. It's natural; all your attention is soaked up by this tiny, helpless piece of your heart that now exists outside of your body. You must figure out how to rectify the loss of pieces of yourself with this new polarization of your personality that centers on the fact that you created a life and you must, you must, you must protect it at all costs. Anyone who has heard their baby cry knows what I mean. This is the primal, physical urge that is part of parenting, which you are nearly powerless to control. Over time, all of your identities should even out to a fine balance, but it is not easy, and for some of us it is harder. For some of us, hormones and lack of sleep induce a depressive state that is hard to come out of alone, and we need therapy, medications, and the greater support of our families and friends.
I belonged (belong?) to the latter group. When more than six weeks went by after our son's birth and I wasn't coping well (meaning I found myself bawling in the shower because I just wanted to sleep, and oh God what had I done? What kind of mother was I to bring this beautiful baby into the world and then tire of caring for him so easily? Why did I feel like I just wanted to run away and hide in the wild, foraging for food and forgetting about my former life?). Obviously I wasn't thinking clearly, and I knew I wasn't, even as I stood in the shower longer than necessary to avoid my responsibilities, but I still couldn't get a handle on it. So back to my doctor I went, crying when trying to explain to her that I loved my son beyond words, but sometimes I just wanted to leave him and his father to be happy with each other, because they were too precious to bring down with my sadness and anger. Yes, I said anger! That's partly how it manifested for me. Lack of sleep, my sequestration as a stay at home mother, and imbalanced hormones lead to more than one stupid argument between my husband and I. Looking back, it really wasn't that bad, lots of people experience worse, but I am used to keeping my cool in tough situations, rather than succumbing to a good foot stomping through the house (for example, when a screaming baby can't stop screaming, and what am I doing with my life, and what about my dreams, and what happened to me, and is this all I am now?).
My doctor prescribed a low dosage of a popular medication, and gave me suggestions for therapy. I chose a mental health counselor who specialized in women experiencing Post-Partum Depression, and off to see her I want. Imagine my surprise when I left her home office positively beaming! This is not typical, and she had warned me that people often experience some hard feelings after the first session or two, but just going to someone so nice and thoughtful and getting it all out made me feel so free. In the end she determined that I did not have PPD, but that I would likely have developed it if I had not done something soon to take care of my mental health. She recommended that I take the medication, as it was meant to help but not do all the work, simply making it a little easier to be the person I wanted to be, that woman who, in a chaotic environment, embodies peace and poise and knows what to do instead of losing it.
My counselor and I worked together for a couple of months, and by the end of our journey, I had experienced a great deal of self-discovery. Much of my almost-depression had to do with my own childhood experiences, feelings about my upbringing that I thought I had let go and left behind me (but those things never really do, they are too complicated to just push away and ignore). There was the knowledge that my only sibling was going through several serious mental health disorders that had required hospitalization in the past with no clear picture of the future of his illness, a father who drank too much and thought little of anyone but himself (and never seemed to shy away from letting us know it), and a mother who took the whole world on her shoulders, working herself to the bone, becoming inaccessible due to absence and then exhaustion when she was present. Every family experiences complicated dynamics like this, and the healthier thing is to deal with them, accept them, acknowledge them for what they are, rather than pretend that everything is okay.
My counselor taught me about mindfulness, something I apparently already practiced a great deal of, and the end result was that I needed to reclaim my self, my goals, and my plans that did not necessarily include being a mom. What was I going to do before we learned we were to have a baby? Go to grad school! Write! Research! Travel! Learn a language! The list was as extensive as Santa's Naughty or Nice list by the time I was done.
Slowly, balance appeared, not through lack of hard work on my part and the deep, understanding support of my husband and his mom (whom we live with at the time being). By the end of the year, I had narrowed down specific goals and chose schools to which I would apply. With the help of a friend, I managed to study for the GRE and score competitively, and completed all my applications early, in time to forget about it while we took a trip back to Tennessee for Christmas.
Direction. Purpose. Self. For some people, being a mom is enough of a purpose that they need little else, and I deeply admire that. It took me some time to understand and accept that it is not enough for me, and trying to be super mom to the exclusion of all else meant that I didn't know who I was anymore.
Now our amazing little blue-eyed boy is almost a year old. He and I have grown so much together in these past eleven months. He is joy, he is light, and he is the ultimate expression of the love I have for his father. I can't wait to go on this crazy grad school journey with them, and though I know it will be hard and test our resolve, I have found myself, I know who I am, and I wouldn't want to be anyone else.
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