Robin | Farewell Stranger

The Circle of PPD

March 15, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

This photo is what PPD feels like to me. I’ve seen other descriptions – accurate, heartbreaking waterfalls of emotion describing what it’s like to deal with postpartum depression. But this is what it feels like to me.

To me, it’s actually a physical sensation. I feel it in my eyes, of all places. It seems to cut off my peripheral vision so that I can only see what’s right in front of me. And everything else goes black.

In my worst moments, it feels like the darkness is closing in. Like all the good and normal things in life have faded away and will soon disappear. In those moments, this circle of despair is all I can see.

Some days the dark disappears and I live in the light.

Recently I thought I was done with the darkness, but that, I see now, is not the case. Neither is it as simple as that – as being done, or being better. It’s not light and dark, good and bad, black and white.

Most days that circle is just there.

It’s ringed by darkness, true, but it’s not (thankfully) the horrible feeling that used to frame my existence, the one I still get, but only occasionally, that I never knew before – the one that appears as a question, unbidden: “What’s the point?”

That circle, now, limits me to what’s right in front of me. When I’m at work, I’m working and generally not thinking about what my husband and son are doing. When I’m at home, work fades entirely away and I can’t remember what’s on my to-do list for the next day. I can only remember my calendar a block at a time and have to sneak peeks at my BlackBerry during meetings to figure out where I’m supposed to be next.

When I’m mired in mommy muck, I can see only my existence and can’t – no matter how many times I’ve been told – see that others feel this way too. That I’m not the only one who finds it hard.

That circle makes me forget things that are important. Important generally, but also to me. I forget, sometimes, to ask how my husband is doing. He’s a tough cookie but I’m sure some of this is hard for him too.

Last month, I forgot a good friend’s son’s first birthday. I have missed the chance to acknowledge it the way I want to – to let her know that I love her and I love her family and I can’t believe he’s one already.

My circle scratches a boundary around my awareness like an old-fashioned compass, drawing a line around how much I feel able to act upon. (Some things (like four unpaid parking tickets) might be less about able and more about willing.)

My mom is doing her usual amazing job at supporting people and sending helpful links and phoning when she knows I need back-up and I have never, ever been as good as I’d like about making sure she’s getting what she needs, too.

I feel stuck in that circle.

This is not meant to sound like a pity party, nor another virtual self-flagellation.

It just is what it is. And it’s frustrating.

I want to rip that circle off – physically rip it off like the cap off the lens of a camera – and toss it aside. Some days I manage to do that, but it always comes back, tied to me with some sort of invisible safety cord making sure I can’t lose it for good.

I’m starting to think maybe trying to toss it aside isn’t the answer. Maybe I need to break it, slowly, like a chip in a windshield that spreads until it shatters, piercing the darkness so that all that’s left is light.

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Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: admissions, perspective

Shrink Me

March 14, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with my therapist that went something like this:

Me: [crying my eyes out and using up all her Kleenex]

Her: “I don’t think your meds are working… I’m going to suggest something to you and see if you have a response. Well, you’re going to have a response, so I’m just going to say it and then we can deal with your response.”

Me: [waiting. I think I know what she’s going to say.]

Her: “I think you should see a psychiatrist.”

I have a response, all right. But it’s probably not what she’s expecting. It’s not, “Hell, no!” or “Thanks but no thanks” or even “I’m not sure what I think about that.”

My response is, “Yes, please. (Can I go right now?)”

We talk about it some more and I tell her about how I actually requested a referral to a psychiatrist a year ago – one that was recommended by a friend who’s a nurse – but I didn’t “meet the criteria”. The same criteria, incidentally, that prevented me from getting in to see this very same counsellor (pregnant or a baby under 12 months) until I ponied up the cash to pay for private visits. She recommends a different shrink and suggests I talk to my doctor about a referral. Interestingly, both of the psychiatrists recommended to me – both of them women – have a reputation for having a fairly brusque bedside manner. <sarcasm> (I can’t tell you how much this reassures me.) </sarcasm>

I agree to talk to my doctor and again work up the nerve to call and make that appointment. When I get there, I’m feeling pretty good so the conversation goes a little sideways. I describe how my ultimate goal is to feel well enough to get pregnant again and the result is that she agrees to talk to the first psychiatrist – the one my nurse friend recommended – about what is referred to, in a fabulously clinical way, as a “pre-conception appointment”.

It takes a month to get the news that this shrink has agreed to see me. In the meantime, I go from feeling pretty good and going back to my doctor to discuss weaning off medication to feeling a little less good to realizing going off meds is perhaps not such a good idea. (Chutes and ladders, anyone?)

As of now I’m still keeping that cliff in sight while trying desperately to figure out what’s around the corner.

As part of that orienteering effort, I sat through another session with my counsellor today. Sobbed through it, actually. Something’s not working and I’m stuck in the swirl, as she calls it (an apt metaphor, because I liken it to a merry-go-round I can’t get off). I sniffed and sniveled, wailed and wept, and blurted out all the stuff that’s going through my head. Stuff I can’t shut off no matter how hard I try. I listened to everything she had to say and when she asked how I felt about her assessment of what’s good enough, what’s normal, what I can control and what I can’t I thought, “I understand all that. I know it to be true but I can’t make myself believe it.”

I see the psychiatrist on Thursday, and that’s probably a good thing. I have no idea what to expect. She might be abrupt. She might wonder how this crazy woman who clearly is in no shape to be considering another baby got through her doors. She might not actually hear me – might just change my meds or up my dose or something else that might work…or might not, because it’s not really addressing my issue.

But she also might help me – perhaps by changing my medication to something that will work, perhaps by suggesting another resource, or perhaps by reiterating something I already know and am just not letting myself hear.

Whatever she does, at this point all I can do is hope it helps.

Filed Under: Postpartum depression · Tagged With: meds, meltdown

Sweetness and Sentiment

March 14, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

One day soon, they will appear. Their presence will be fleeting, their contribution sweeter for its shortness. They will sit among the usual, the mundane, and to many they will appear to be nothing special. But they are.

I first noticed them two seasons ago. Until then everything about that day was ordinary: walking the aisles, skirting table edges to prevent a cascade of bouncing and bruising, scanning for items on a list. While I appreciated all that lay before me – the bright colours, the crisp leaves, the smooth skins – it was all very normal.

And then I saw them.

Image credit: dreamstime

Small, green, perfect. I can hear the audible crack as they open and the stripping sound as I run my thumb down the centre, freeing each perky pea from its pointy shell. I can taste the ideal combination of sweetness and crunch as I bite into them. Each one is capped with a jaunty hat that reflects their place in my memory – a place of happiness and of sunlight.

I’m sentimental about these peas, even though they’ve left me with a scar.

I was two, or slightly older. About the age Connor is now. It was pea-shelling time at my Grandma’s farm – something not to be missed. In my memory I was running to get there, anxious to help and hoping for a taste. I burst through the open front door out into the sunlight, all my senses trained on the sweetness of those peas.

And not, unfortunately, on the rocky steps in front of me.

I went down, hard, a small girl in a frilly dress, and my forehead met jagged concrete. Instead of sweetness that day I got stitches and a scar.

Having been so young, my memories of this day are probably more through the telling of it than the truth (though my mother remembers it quite differently). Either way, I carry a vision in my mind of what that day was like. I remember my family, not my fall. I remember the sunshine, not the stitches. It’s a happy memory, bringing with it all the sweetness of sentimentality.

I look for them every year, those English peas. When I see them I stop and smile. I pause to touch my forehead and then buy a bag to share with my son.

Experimenting with a memory. Concrit welcome on this one.

Filed Under: Writing · Tagged With: family

I Suck at Saturdays

March 12, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Here we are again, Saturday stretching in front of us. Husband is working, I’m sick, kid is…bouncy. I know I need to be better about Saturdays – make plans so we have something to do. But again I haven’t done that and again I’m not motivated to try. I’m tired, it’s raining and the last thing I feel like doing is going out in public. Especially with a two-year-old.

He decides he doesn’t want to nap. I try for an hour, maybe longer, to no avail. He’s gone from asking to go to bed to flipping around, falling off the bed, hiding under the covers. This is not a good sign.

Eventually he says, “I’m done.” So am I. I give up.

Downstairs again, we eat lunch. Or at least I eat lunch. He has two bites of soup and decides he’s had enough. I can’t muster the energy to care.

We try the nap again. No go.

The good news is I haven’t lost my patience with all of this, as has happened on so many weekends before. The bad news is I have someone breathing down my neck about it.

“He’s obviously tired and now he’s going to be hungry. Why don’t you try harder?”

“Because I’ve already tried – twice now – to get him to nap. He’s not going to. And if he’s not going to eat now he’ll eat later.”

“He’s going to get bored, though. Why don’t you go out?”

“Where would we go? It’s raining, and I don’t feel like it. I’m dying for some time to myself.”

“You had that on Thursday, remember? You took the day off and sat on the couch in your pajamas all day.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“You have a two-year-old. This is how it is now. Everyone else can do it. Why can’t you?”

“I don’t know. But it’s been over two years of this same shit every weekend. Why can’t I do this? I’m sick of this. So sick of not being able to be a mom like everyone else.”

The phone rings.

“It’s your mom.”

I’m tempted to not answer it. I suspect she’s seen my tweet and is calling to see if I need backup. I don’t need it the way I’ve needed it on other days, though I’d happily have someone else come and distract him for a bit. But if I answer the phone and say yes it’s an admission that I can’t do this.

Screw it. I answer the phone.

She comes over. My dad, on his way home from downtown, comes over. While they play I do laundry and tidy up a bit. The productivity helps my mental state.

After a while, they bundle the kid up and take him and the dog to the park. Alone in the house, the dialogue starts up again.

“Your mom did this with four kids, you know.”

“Believe me, I know. I’m sure she wonders what the hell is wrong with me. It’s not like it was before – where they have to come so I don’t throw him out the window – but I’m still not where I want to be. I just don’t know how to make other people understand it. I don’t understand it.”

“So just suck it up. He’s your kid, you’re his mom, and it’s your job to take care of him. Entertain him, stimulate him, play with him.”

“Sometimes I don’t want to.”

“Oh for God’s sake. Your husband does this every day! He manages to find things to do so they have fun. He doesn’t just sit there and wish he had the house to himself. What’s wrong with you?!”

I’ve had enough. I call a halt to the stream of self-criticism.

“Hey! Think back to what weekends used to be like! I’m doing better than I used to. I didn’t have any ‘I can’t do this!’ moments today. Yeah, sure, ‘I don’t want to’ isn’t a whole lot better but at least I’m not having a meltdown. And besides, I’m sick. And I’m tired. I’ve got a really wiggly kid sleeping on me every other night and work has been busy and we’re waiting for God-knows-what to happen on Monday AND I’ve got stupid family stress. So just give me a break!”

For once, the other voice is silent. Thinking. Reflecting.

I still suck at Saturdays, but I suck less than I used to.