This is it people, the raw unfiltered truth. Depression sucks and I am terrified that this is what my life will always be now, and that I am losing the core of myself to it. This is not the darkest that it has ever been for me. At this point the hold is not so strong that I can't fight through it to some extent. I can put on a happy face, I can still immerse myself in projects, but the me that my kids see, that my husband sees...is not the me I want to be. I can only hold onto the other me, the real me, for so long at a time, and then it starts to slip away, swallowed by the darkness and the rage. When I fall there, I am afraid that I won't be able to pull myself out. I fear this is the only me that my kids will ever remember. I fear this is the me that my husband will someday no longer have the strength or will to love. There are moments when it chokes me completely and I fantasize about packing up the dog and disappearing, that Joe and the kids would be better off that way, and maybe I will be too. I know that if I did leave, I would miss them without measure in a matter of hours, it would never last. But it breaks my heart that the thought ever comes to begin with.
Fighting this on a daily basis is exhausted. I am thankful that there are days that I do feel okay. My depression is very hormonally based. I am on my second cycle since going off the medication completely. I was actually okay while tapering off the meds and for the first few weeks once I was off completely. I felt strong and empowered. I was totally convinced that going off the meds was God's Plan for me. Everything went so well. His answer was so clear. I had no reason to doubt it. Then something strange happened. I know that this catalyst has had a huge impact in how everything has been going over the last five weeks or so. Joe and I are very done with having children. We made this decision years ago. We were always open to the possibility that something might happen and we were okay with that. But...there would be no trying. We were not going to add that stress to our lives. I certainly did not want to deal with the possibility of going through PPD again, so we were happy and we were done. Then one day I was sure that I felt God tell me that I was pregnant. It was two full weeks before taking a test was even possible. So I went with it. I hadn't asked for it. I would not be disappointed if it wasn't true. I am happy with my family the way that it is. I begin having strong PMS symptoms, but one symptom in particularly, breast tenderness, was very strong. It actually presented the exact same way that it did when I was pregnant with my second child. I took this as confirmation and waited until I could take a test. A few days before my period was to begin I started getting really irritable, a normal PMS symptom. The issue with the breast tenderness was interesting though. Normally with PMS it will last on and off for several days prior to my period. It is never a constant discomfort. The only time that it was a constant discomfort was when I was pregnant with my son. It was to the point where I could not wear my sports bra, and could not get comfortable at night. So I waited. The early tests were all negative. The morning my period was due the test was negative and it started a few hours later. This is the part that gets difficult to explain. I was not disappointed that I wasn't pregnant. The idea sounded fun here and there, but I am well enough versed in the reality of parenthood that I understand the stress that this would put on me. My fear was never that I wasn't pregnant, it was what not being pregnant would do to me in my relationship with God. And this little detail of not being pregnant struck a huge blow to that relationship. Being pregnant was not something I asked for or desired. As many women I do have an occasional fleeting moment of holding a baby where I wonder what if, but then I move on. I still am trying to figure out and fight my way back from why God would tell me this and have it turn out not to be true. Maybe I misinterpreted something, but I was so sure and so at peace with this knowledge that now I am utterly confused and frustrated. I feel totally disconnected in my relationship with Him right now, and that has been the most difficult thing to deal with. I know that I need Him if I am going to keep this depression under control at all. This has also left me doubting my whole decision to go off my medication to begin with. That prompt from God seemed so clear and decisive. Yet here I am, weeks later, completely falling apart.
The PMS part of that last cycle was rough physically, but mood wise I was okay except for the irritability the last several days. Once my period started that irritability persisted and the depressed mood started to kick it. I am an angry person when I am depressed. I don't have loads of patience to begin with, so when I add this anger on top of my lack of patience things do not go well. Luckily I had lots of stuff going on to distract me. Both kids were still in school and I had a huge birthday bash to craft and plan for. This kept me motivated, and we went right from that to all of the end of the school year activities, including a Kindergarten Graduation. So I plowed on through, feeling depressed and irritated here and there, but I was managing it. Then school ended. Now both my kids are with me ALL the time. And we are in wedding season, so my husband is working ALL the time. PMS for my current cycle kicked in hard, right as school ended. Then my period started and girls, it has been a rough one. Besides the issues with my mood, it has been really heavy and the migraines have been killer. And I have also turned into an insomniac over the last week, which is NOT helping. I used to have issues with insomnia when I was younger and they popped back up during my pregnancy and every now and then with a bad cycle, but it has been a long time.
So this is where I stand right now. I am exhausted, I am depressed, I am angry and I feel completely alone. I have really been trying to work my way back into having a connection with God, and have done a few things that have helped a little, but I keep getting overwhelmed by the thought that I can't trust myself to know how He is trying to guide me, which leaves me feeling that disconnect all over again.
I feel like I don't have anyone to talk to. I could talk to Joe, but honestly he is rarely home and the times I have had the opportunity, I haven't been able to talk. I held back because I knew I would end up dumping all over him spewing everything out, and I just didn't have the strength to even let a little out, because I was just barely holding on in that moment. I felt like if I moved just one little inch everything would come crashing down. So I held it in. I have lots of Mom friends....lovely people, I am sure many of them would listen to me and be supportive, but have you ever tried to have a serious conversation with kids running all over the place. I honestly feel like I never actually get to finish any conversation when my kids are around. I decided it is more frustrating to try to start a conversation about the stuff I need to get out there, and then get cut off and never get to finish. That will just leave me feeling more lost and disappointed.
Then I feel terribly guilty. I feel awful for the way I speak to my husband and my kids. I feel like I yell all the time. I snap at Joe for no reason way too often and make him feel terrible. I don't know why he puts up with it. I feel so jealous of him sometimes that he gets out, that he has time to himself even though he works so much. He still has time with other men, he gets to talk to them, he gets to get AWAY. I desperately need that and I know that it is not going to happen, so I try not to think about it. We are immersed in wedding season now. I am lucky if Joe is even home more than three nights a week. And when he is home we are both so tired that we put the kids to bed and watch tv and go to bed ourselves. He actually went up to bed at 7 pm tonight. I can't blame him, he didn't get home until 2:30 am last night. It is so much harder when he is not here. One night this week, when he was home, and there was one meltdown too many from the kids, I just got in the car and left. I didn't have to say anything to him, he knew what was happening. It didn't help as much as I hoped it would...I was too emotional to calm down much. I just know I am faced with night after night all summer long without that as an option. Forget just the summer. Last year the working all the time lasted until Thanksgiving...so hooray. I love my husband with everything in me, but I often wonder how things are going to be able to last, with him gone so much and me like this.
I need time to myself to reflect and work through this, time to not think at all. I need time to talk to other people who get this, to have uninterrupted conversations to help me hash all this out. I need time with my husband. We need to have some fun, this stress is not good for him at all either, and I hate what it is doing to him. BUT, funds are low and debts are high, so I basically have to figure out how to work through this as things stand. The things I feel I need aren't going to happen often enough, so I am going to have to figure something else out. I am going to have to figure out a way to pull myself out of this darkness that is trying to take over the core of who I am.
Whenever I write a blog entry, I try to end it with a positive thought. My purpose is to bring hope to those of you who are also fighting the darkness. Sadly I don't think that I can do that today. But maybe that is okay? Sometimes it just really sucks. Sometimes you will feel completely alone and like you can never find your way out. There are people out there that have found ways to overcome this. I honestly don't know what I am going to do. I am going to try to do better tomorrow than I did today. And I actually did do better today that I was at the beginning of last week, so maybe that is progress. I am going to find projects to immerse myself in. I am going to try to find ways to feel connected to other people. I am going to try to keep my kids busy and happy this summer. I am going to try to not yell as much tomorrow. I am going to try to let my guy know how much I love him, even when I feel like the darkness is trying to choke it out of me. I am going to keep fighting. No matter how lost and alone I feel, I have never lost sight of how much I have to fight for.
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