Archives for May 2011

Run and Hide

May 5, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

The first time I ran away from home I was 36 years old. This is what happened two weeks ago.

***

The inside of my head is screaming. I can’t be here. I already had one escape and it was 24 hours of sanity in the midst of a mad merry-go-round with a cackling clown taking up all the space in my brain and preventing me from finding an exit. That escape helped, but not enough. Mostly just made me realize how much I need some space to think.

Being on leave from work to deal with postpartum depression is good. Having a toddler around the house who is my trigger is bad, hence the inside-the-head screaming.

My husband understands that I need to be away for a bit and we talk about options. They’re all possible, and yet not what I need.

I feel trapped. I’m back to imagining what it would be like to live in a condo by myself. Finally, I decide to ignore my credit card balance and spend the money for another night in a hotel.

And then it comes. A message from a friend, one who doesn’t know how much I’m dying to run away but who happens to appear at exactly the right moment.

I’m going to be away for a bit, she says. You’re welcome to use my apartment if you want a break.

I come very close to crying with relief.

She drops off keys on her way out of town. I still hesitate. Can I leave my husband to be on toddler duty alone for however long I decide to escape?

Yes, he says. Really, you can.

What if I leave and decide I don’t want to come back? I worry about this.

I hope you don’t, but if you do we’ll deal with it. He has faith when I don’t.

So I leave.

***

I walked into my friend’s apartment feeling like I was intruding, but all that was there was peace. It was everything my toddler-dominated house is not. Clean. Quiet. Decorated the way I’ve always imagined my home would be if I lived by myself.

Luxurious white bedding suggested hours of uninterrupted, guilt-free sleep.

A couch with a soft blanket provided a space to sit or write or watch TV.

The kitchen made it clear I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and that no one else would be there to ask for a snack and then not eat it.

I walked into the bathroom to set my cosmetic case down and hung on the wall was something that made it clear I was in the right place:

I spent one night there and felt much more my keep-calm-and-carry-on self. I came home over Easter weekend when my siblings showed up from out of town. When they left, I went back to my friend’s place and didn’t know when I’d be home.

That stay turned out to be for three full days. I left for an appointment and then came back and spent a full 48 hours holed up there, blinds drawn, hiding. I finally emerged to get some groceries – across the street and back again, filled with anxiety until the door closed behind me.

I spent the time writing. I read – a lot. I took deep breaths. I cried it out. I bought fruit and forced myself to eat it. I allowed myself to eat ice cream.

I stayed up late, when the world was quiet and dark. Then I took my sleepy time pills and crashed for 12 hours at a time.

By the third day, I knew I needed to leave. I had realized I could stay there forever – not in that apartment, but in that dark place where I stay in my pajamas all day and shower at 9 p.m. Where I avoid going to sleep because I’m not ready to do all this again another day. Where every night I take a pill that knocks me out for so long that I don’t have to.

Coming home, I was ready to deal with whatever the toddler threw at me – literally or figuratively. I knew it would be challenging and I was prepared to deal with it. Or at least I thought it was.

He was practically manic from my return and we had a bedtime battle that dumped me right back into the depths of anger and despair. Turns out those triggers are deeply embedded in me and it’s going to take a lot more than three days of self-reflection to put a damper on my response to them.

But I rediscovered a part of myself in that apartment – a part I knew was there but couldn’t coax into the light. My friend thought she was just giving me keys, but what she actually gave me was a path out of the darkness.

Love you, M. You saved me during a time I really needed it and I’ll never be able to adequately express how grateful I am for that.

Prompt 2: That time you ran away from home.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: anxiety, call for back-up, gratitude, hope, love, meltdown

Fledgling Friday – May 6 edition

May 5, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

This has been a busy week and I’m behind on my reading, so I’d love it if you’d post one of your recent posts for me to have a look at.

I’ll leave the link-up open until Sunday, so please join in!

Filed Under: Fledgling Fridays · Tagged With: community, spreading the love

I Know, Right Now You Can’t Tell

May 4, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

“I feel like a fraud.”

Two friends, on the same day, during separate conversations, making the same statement. Two moms struggling with postpartum depression and questioning whether their struggle is real. Whether doing something to get help is valid.

I get this. Had, in fact, just written about it. That post didn’t even end up articulating what I meant when I started writing it. My question to myself and, by posting it, to others, was: Am I making this up?

We all have good days. On those days, we question why it’s so hard at other times. We wonder if perhaps it’s all in our heads. It is, in a way, at least from a biochemical standpoint, but it’s the nature of the depression demons to make you lose sight of things.

When I am okay, I can’t really remember what it’s like to feel not okay.

When I am not okay, I really can’t imagine ever feeling good again.

It’s not like this is something I could put on a calendar and prepare for, like this:

Monday will be a good day, and you should prepare to go to work and not worry about whether you are going to be forcing down anxiety attacks in the middle of meetings.
Tuesday will not be a good day. You will not feel able to go to work, but you will have to so pack your happy mask and pretend you are all right.
By Wednesday, things will be on the upswing again and you’ll feel better, saner, calmer. But in the back of your mind you will know that you are still on this roller coaster and it’s going to be a while after you get off before you really know you’re not on it anymore.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I’m not working right now. I took four weeks of leave, which has turned into longer than that (more on that in another post). When I went into work to talk to my boss about taking leave during what was initially a vacation week, I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and a ball cap and prayed there wouldn’t be very many people in the office. I had stuffed my pockets with Kleenex just in case and would have given anything to teleport in and out of his office so no one else would see me.

If I had gone in today, I would have been showered and dressed and looking mostly normal. If someone would have asked me how I am, I would have said “okay”. That would have been true and they probably wouldn’t have been able to tell that I’m a bit loopy from medication. But on Friday I was also okay – pretty good, actually – and then late that night I got some bad news. That slope is awfully slippery, and Saturday was one of those days where I spent the day crying and wishing I could die.

In the ratio of bad days to good over the past few weeks while I’ve been off work, the bad days are holding a solid lead. But that’s slowly shifting as each and every day I’m learning more about what I need to do to ensure the good days start to outnumber the bad, and so that eventually the bad will be few and far between. But for now, I still have really bad days and I know the process I have to go through to get past those is not an easy or a fast one, so when the good days come I try to feel grateful and not like a fraud.

Given the choice, I would actually be happy for it all to be in my head. One day it will be, but only as a memory.

Post dedicated to my friends T and T, who are not frauds, and to D, who was listening to “Unwell” by Matchbox Twenty with me. He had the same light bulb moment when we heard the chorus (below) and correctly guessed it would turn into a post.

“Hold on
I’m feeling like I’m headed for a
Breakdown
I don’t know why

I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell
I know, right now you can’t tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you’ll see
A different side of me

I’m not crazy, I’m just a little impaired
I know, right now you don’t care
But soon enough you’re gonna think of me
And how I used to be”

(YouTube won’t let me embed this video, but I’ll give you this image as a link. Because Rob Thomas is cute.)

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: depression, perspective, we're not alone

Trees and Sticks and Birds, Oh My!

May 4, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

We’ve lived in this house for eight years, and I often walk around the area. Many times I’ve wished I had a camera with me so I could snap some of the things I see. This time I didn’t, but I had my BlackBerry so made do. Amazing what you see when you really look.

The sun streams through the trees as evening approaches.

Who lined these up? Woodland fairies? I don’t know but I’m intrigued.

I’ve walked by this house many times and love these little bird houses.

Love the pop of red in the trees.

Linked up with:

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: living life, photos

Master of The Zone

May 3, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

In the summer of 2006, I was nine months into my master’s degree program. It was a full-time program and I was working full time as well in a job I’d started six months earlier.

Then I started training for my first half-marathon.

Then we got a puppy.

It turns out the puppy was a bit much. He was adorable, energetic and loved chewing on socks, but he needed constant stimulation. We got him some chewy sticks but he refused to entertain the idea of chewing on one unless someone was holding the other end. It’s awfully hard to type graduate-level papers with one hand.

I figured it all out (toes work almost as well as fingers to hold a chewy stick, as it turns out) and felt busy, energized, and alive during that time.

I was in the zone.

I’d go to running clinic and whatever it was – hill repeats, laps at the track, sprints – I ran it. I ran in the sun and felt my spirit soar. Running was hard, and I loved it because it was hard. I got up at 5 a.m. on Fridays for workouts and gave up sleeping in on Sundays for long runs.

I went to work every day and even though it wasn’t my dream job I was finally in a job in the field I wanted to be in.

And all through this I was doing coursework – researching, writing, thinking about things that changed my whole understanding of what I wanted to do in the world.

As for the puppy, he was by then firmly ensconced in our family and was a source of joy and laughter. This despite having to be let out in the night to pee. And then having to be convinced to come back inside. And having to be trained and socialized and taught it’s not okay to bite one’s mother, canine or otherwise.

I was tired, but figured early workouts and middle-of-the-night pees were helpful training for having a baby.

I was so steeped in the newness of it all that my life felt full, but not to overflowing. I did well at work and then changed jobs a few months later when I was offered my dream job.

I moved through the courses for my degree – learning and developing relationships with people who, five years later, are more family than friends.

I met my goal for the half marathon in the fall and enjoyed every minute and every mile.

By the time I graduated with my MA in 2007, I was seven weeks pregnant with Connor and a new chapter in my life was about to begin. When I walked across the convocation stage I felt good, but when I met up with my parents after the ceremony and saw the looks on their faces, I realized how proud they were of me. Which seemed fair, because I was – and am – proud of myself.

____________________

This post is in response to a prompt from The Red Dress Club: “Tell the story (without any trivialization or modesty) of something in your life that you are proud of.”