The post for this week isn’t going to be like the last few posts I’ve shared. I have something weighing heavily on my brain, and I think other moms out there might need to hear this. Whether it’s someone they love, or themselves going through something similar to what I’ve been going through.
This last week has been a real struggle. If I’m being honest, this last year and a half has been a struggle for me. If I’m being even more honest, I’ve had a problem for a long time.
I’ve struggled with it since I was a kid, and it only got worse in college. When I lived up in Sacramento my last full year at Sac State, I would often lock myself in the closet and turn the lights out, just so I could feel like the world was a little smaller. Or, to feel like I wasn’t part of the world any more. Not in a, ‘I want to die’ kind of way, I was actually struggling with huge anxiety surrounding death and dying. But in a, ‘I just need to not exist for a little while’ kind of way. I just needed the world to take a breath. I needed my brain to go completely blank and just let me bask in the dark empty space of my closet so I could function for another day.
I never thought of therapy. I tried meds for a minute, but I didn’t like them and I gave them up.
I learned coping mechanisms and how to power through.
See, I like to say that I have functioning depression, functioning anxiety.
My mental health issues rarely paralyze me into staying in bed all day. I can still clean the kitchen. I can still force myself to get out of the house and run errands and talk to people and tell them “I’m fine” when they ask.
But, I’m not.
The mask I have become so skilled at putting on has started to slip and it’s getting harder and harder to put back into place so no one can see how shattered I am inside. How many shards and fragments stab out from the bubbling emptiness I can feel swallowing me whole.
And I hate myself for it.
I don’t want to be this weak.
I don’t want to need help.
I have always been so concerned with not being a burden that I never told my parents, as an adolescent, just how bad my depression was. I have never even wanted to admit it to myself. Not even when, as a mom, my own mother suggested I talk to someone and even maybe consider meds again.
I kept justifying my depression and anxiety attacks.
If he would just sleep. If he would just eat. If I could just get a consistent schedule. If I could just have a day off.
But all of that has happened. Dorian sleeps almost religiously from 1-3 in the afternoon. He sleeps from 7 or 7:30 at night until somewhere between 6 & 7 the next morning. He goes to see grandparents once a week and stays the night over every couple weeks.
And yet, I still feel this way. I need a break from myself.
I’m still struggling.
I’m still fighting with myself saying, ‘I can’t be a good mom like this. I don’t want my son to remember me this way’
I have this line in my head, you know, cuz I write and I think in terms of opening lines and dialogue. But the line I have in my head is what I imagine my son saying to the girl he wants to bring home to meet me. ‘My first memory of my mother is of her laughing and dancing in the kitchen while she cooked. My second memory is of her lying on the kitchen floor crying her eyes out.’
I don’t want that to be my son’s dialogue.
This last week was just hard. A downward spiral that I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of. For me, it seems to start with something not happening the way I have in my head that it will happen. Whether that is a change in routine, a change in schedule, or that I woke up and felt fat that day, so none of my clothes seemed to look good on me.
This week it was a change in schedule. I was supposed to have Tuesday alone to write and Thursday to clean. I found out I wasn’t getting either of those days and it just all fell apart. But Thursday I was so broken and distraught that Dorian threw his waffles at me and I had a major ‘sit on the floor, rocking back and forth bawling asking why can’t anything be easy’ melt down.
My dad texted me that day asking if I wanted him to come get Dorian and I was so deep in my hole that I couldn’t even understand his text. I couldn’t come up with an answer. I was torn between, ‘I don’t want to be a burden’ and ‘oh my God, someone please save me’. I texted back, “idk, we’re on mile 2 of ‘get mom’s head straight walk’ and it’s not working”
He came and picked him up. He made the decision to save me when I didn’t feel like I could ask for it.
I had kept thinking I needed a break from my son. But when I got a break from him, I still couldn’t get my brain in order. I still couldn’t go a day without freaking out and wondering why nothing can ever just be easy.
I kept going throughout my day and I would think I was fine, and then, I would be sitting there watching home makeover shows and I would just feel the emptiness well up inside and start flowing out of me.
I kept texting my husband, ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and he would ask what I couldn’t do. My answer was, ‘I don’t know, but I just can’t.’
I didn’t want to give up on life. I just didn’t know how to function anymore. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t know how to keep living. I was tired of trying to be strong. I was tired of functioning even though I wasn’t fine. And I am tired of justifying my depression.
I realized that since my son has been born, I haven’t figured out how to enjoy anything. I know there are things I enjoy, but I can’t seem to find the time, energy, or attention to devote to those things. I love to cook, but trying to cook an interesting meal with a toddler screaming the entire time that he wants ‘UP-UPPP!’ is not fun. I can’t read in the middle of the day while he naps because once I start reading, I can’t stop. But that hasn’t been a problem lately, because I can’t seem to find anything that holds my attention long enough. Just the thought of the effort it takes to play a video game stresses me out.
I suffer from depression. I don’t know why. It’s not my job to figure that out by myself.
So, to be better for me, to enjoy life again, to be a better mom, I am starting the process of therapy.
And I am enjoying it.
It is nice to have someone to talk to. It is so nice to have someone say, “I hear you. I see you.”
There’s this stigma around therapy, and even as a psych major and a promoter of therapy for others, I never even considered it for myself. Therapy is for people with problems in their life. I’m just being stupid.
But I’m tired of feeling that way. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with therapy.
If you have decided that you are tired of feeling this way, or you’re tired of your negative self talk, think about therapy.
You may not like the first therapist you go to, or the fifth. But if you are struggling, talking really does help. There’s something so gratifying about knowing that I am starting the healing process.
I have tried to do it by myself. I have tried to read self help books and talk to my mom.
Books can help. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, Need You Now by Plum, Learning to Be by Juanita Campbell Rasmus, Choose Joy Because Happiness Isn’t Enough by Kay Warren, and Winning the War In Your Mind by Craig Groeschel all gave me great insight and helped me not feel alone. But I just found that I can’t do it by myself anymore, and that’s ok.
Part of being strong is recognizing when you need help. And if you need help, that’s ok.
Motherhood is beautiful and a great adventure, but it’s also really hard. It’s harder for some people than others. And just because it’s hard for you, doesn’t mean you aren’t a good mother. Just because you need help doesn’t mean you have, in some way, failed. So reach out. Be the best mother you can be by taking care of yourself.
That’s something I’m still learning how to do.
Cheers to the messiness of motherhood.
Boy Mom 