Note: this post was written in multiple waves. Some of it in the hotel, some of it afterwards (when things became less heavy.) I am choosing to leave in the parts where I question whether I should be here, even though I am no longer feeling this way.
july 30
I have every possible light source turned on inside this hotel room. The blinds are open, allowing what remains of the sunset to shine in. The lamp next to the chaise is a glowing orange. Next to me on the desk is a square lamp with more of a yellow hue. On each side of the bed behind me are two lamps atop bedside tables, shining their light onto the mustard yellow walls. In the entry way is a vertical lamp attached to the wall. The bathroom light is more fluorescent in nature, and it comes alongside the hum of an exhaust fan.
NCIS plays on television in between commercials for injury attorneys, Amy Schumer’s perimenopause medication adverts, and those sad animal neglect ones with the arms of the angel song playing. Ducky tells the team that the body has been dead for 12 hours, simply by looking at it. I used to love watching these formulaic crime shows when I was younger. Something about the predictability was comforting. The good guys always won out in the end. I want to believe that’s true in real life, too.
I keep checking my phone, making sure there’s no new messages from my husband, who is home alone with our daughter. Every few minutes, a new pang of guilt rings through me. I stop to truly feel it. Tension in my shoulders. A sick feeling in my stomach. A catch in my throat. All indications that my body is trying to tell me something. The hotel towel is wrapped around my still-wet hair, and I contemplate taking it home with me when I check out in the morning. My muscles ache from the hours I spent swimming laps in the hotel’s pool. My belly is still full from the complementary dinner of pulled pork sandwiches, baked potatoes, coleslaw, and baked beans. My stay also came with 3 drinks, but funnily enough, when I am alone, with no responsibility, suddenly drinking isn’t as appealing as it has become at home.
I’m here because I needed a break.
I wish I could say that I came to that conclusion calmly, after realizing the intensity of my emotions. I wish I could say that it wasn’t a result of me reaching my absolute breaking point. I wish I could say that I didn’t call my work manager today, in tears, completely overwhelmed by the state of my own life. I wish I could say I’ve overcome my depression, gotten to a much better place, and that everything is fine. I’ve been avoiding writing anything here, because my posts have felt so heavy, and I guess I wanted to wait until things were better before coming here to complain about my sadness again.
I have to keep reminding myself that the way I feel doesn’t mean I don’t love my daughter. I’m so full of love for her that it physically hurts. Her smile is the only brightness in my life right now, and it can completely transform me when I am face to face with her big, gummy grin. She is so pure, so perfect. I feel guilt that I could possibly taint her with my own mental illness. I wonder if she would be better off without me. I wonder if everyone would be.
Yesterday (at the time of writing this) my grandmother died. She was my mother’s mother. I haven’t seen her since my sister finished her GED program, which was at least 7 years ago. At that time, we were strangers. I tried to engage with her, but she didn’t seem all that interested. It kind of caught me off guard, but it shouldn’t have. I haven’t had a relationship with my mom’s side of the family since the car wreck. It makes sense, but it still hurts. My sister was much closer with our grandmother, and I’ve been doing my best to hold my shit together enough to support her however I can as she grieves. I told her I would come to the funeral if she needed me there. It’s clear I’m not welcome, but she won’t tell me that. Instead she says, “I’ll let you know.”
My grandmother’s obituary purposefully left out one of their 3 children, my uncle David, in the section where it says who they are survived by. I knew that there were contentions between them, but to completely erase him from her history took me aback. I can’t pretend I know any details. I don’t. Because my family loves to brush things under the rug and pretend like nothing ever happened. Yet I can’t help but feel some day I will be erased from my mother’s side of the family’s history, too. As if I were so insignificant, I didn’t even deserve to be mentioned. I suppose if that’s what comes to pass, I will have deserved it.
The thing about generational trauma is that there seems to be a lot of pressure in this day and age to be the one who finally breaks the cycle. The one to rid your family of the curse that has plagued them for God knows how long. I only know my history a few generations back. My dad’s grandfather was an alcoholic who begot an alcoholic son who begot an alcoholic son, who beget two drug addicts and, you guessed it, an alcoholic. My mother’s side is a little less clear. Her grandmother was a tough lady, who begot a tough lady, who begot a daughter who was desperate to be loved, who begot a handful of kids to love her.
My husband’s upbringing was no less complicated and no less filled with moments that we could not imagine putting our daughter through. That has resulted in a relationship that has been fraught with conflict, as we both try to navigate a loving, nurturing partnership despite our foundations that were built on the complete opposite. To say it hasn’t been easy would be a profound understatement. Unfortunately the generational trauma curse is not easily broken, and despite our desire to do better than those who came before us, it’s extremely easy to fall into the patterns that we were raised in. To yell out of anger, to isolate and push away rather than lean into one another. To be mean, forgetting that we are, in fact, on the same team and not enemies. To get lost in the moments that take us back to childhood, forgetting that we aren’t those hurt kids anymore. It turns out trauma and feelings don’t know that any time has passed at all.
I did a lot of work on myself before even becoming pregnant with my daughter. It was important to me that I work through the things that I felt would hold me back from being a good mother. The biggest thing was that I truly believed I could not be a good mother. I had to deconstruct that belief and build a new one in its place. I did months of EMDR sessions, which I talked about on this site before, processing the most traumatic moments in my life. I got to a better place, but little did I know how much work was still left to be done. Having a daughter has truthfully brought a lot of things to the surface that were unexpected.
I have a fierce sense of independence. It’s not just difficult for me to ask for help, it’s not something that even occurs to me. I have spent my entire life figuring shit out on my own. So when things got hard with my daughter, it wasn’t in my nature to reach out to my husband for help. I was in denial, in a sense. I was sacrificing sleep so that he could get a full night’s rest. I was pushing myself to my own limits, without considering another way. There were some things I simply couldn’t help. After having a c-section, I quite literally couldn’t shower or put on my clothes on my own. I couldn’t walk around easily, nor carry my baby without effort and pain. In those early days, I had to ask for help. But as my incision healed and my husband returned to work, I slowly sank into this quiet suffering, allowing the pressure of motherhood to become my entire identity.
Those first months, my baby wouldn’t sleep without being held. I would spend hours with her on my chest, sitting on the couch. I remember there being moments when I couldn’t even do anything. I couldn’t focus on a TV show, scroll on my phone, read a book. I would simply sit there, staring off into the distance until my husband came home for his lunch break or after work, which would usually snap me out of it. He would take our daughter so that I could shower and change my clothes (usually for the first time of the day), but oftentimes, during that shower, she would become inconsolable. I’d feel like I had to rush to get back to her, to soothe her. I was running on adrenaline, everything felt like an emergency. There was barely a moment to breathe. Even when she was sleeping, my mind would be racing. Am I doing enough to support her development? Am I producing enough milk? Am I letting her sleep too much? Am I failing because she’s sleeping in my arms and not in a crib? Am I horrible for wanting her to sleep in her crib?
All of this, I shouldered alone. I wouldn’t open up to anyone out of fear. Or, if I did open up, it would be this vague, “Yeah, it’s hard, but I’m managing.” At my 6 week follow-up, I answered the questions on the depression and anxiety screening honestly. I scored high enough that my provider recommended Zoloft for anxiety. I took it, hoping that it would quell the way I was feeling. I also maintained a relationship with my therapist throughout all of this, yet I think I had a tendency of downplaying. Or maybe I wasn’t completely in tune with how bad things were. It isn’t really until I look back now that I see how lost, alone, and anxious I was all the time.
sept 21
I was on a tiny dose of Zoloft for months, and truthfully, nothing was really changing. I was drinking too frequently, feeling exhausted and lonely. I constantly felt like I was failing. My husband would come home to a house that was trashed from having been lived in all day, but typically, there would be warm dinner waiting for him. Yet, I felt as if it weren’t enough.
I should be able to maintain a perfect cleaning schedule alongside caring for my daughter. I should be able to maintain a perfect social life. I should be able to work out three times per week. I should be able to meal plan, grocery shop, and prep food. I should, I should, I should. All of these shoulds rang around relentlessly in my mind. Reminders of why I’m falling short, why I will never be good enough.
Of course, the solution to these thoughts is alcohol. It dims the lights, softens the noise. It allows me to exist a little more peacefully. But for me it’s never been as simple as having a drink to decompress. One drink turns into six before I can even process the first few. I drink to disappear. I drink to make the drowning less painful. Then, when I’m good and drunk, I become the problem. I’m less engaged with my daughter. I shout at my husband for not helping enough. The feelings I experience then become arrows of projections. I aim, shoot, and succeed. I see the pain cross his face. I am numb. I usher myself to bed. The cycle continues tomorrow.
It’s exhausting, and it feels like I’m trapped. I see no way out, and thoughts begin to get darker. I question whether I was really ready to be a parent. I question whether I’m cut out for this life at all.
The Lindsay Clancy case is front and center. A woman, ravaged by postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis to the extent of taking the life of her three children and then attempt her own suicide. I watch the trial with horror. I see women speaking out all over the internet about their experiences with postpartum mental health. I feel some level of gratitude that we are having these conversations. I have felt like I’m the only one struggling. Like I’m the only one who didn’t adore the newborn phase. Like I’m the only one who wanted so badly to be a mother and yet is struggling with the transition into motherhood. I can see now that isn’t the case, and I want to speak out, too. I want other women to know they aren’t alone. They don’t need to suffer in silence.
A couple of months ago, my husband realized how bad things were getting. He asked a coworker if they ever experienced postpartum things. Their face got serious and their tone somber.
“You need to reach out for help immediately.”
That tells me everything I need to know.
Women everywhere are suffering alone. They’re not speaking about it. Maybe they have the same fears that I do. That I will be seen as less of a mother because I am sad and anxious and struggling. That the quality of their mothering is based on how happy and joyous they are.
In the depths of my despair, I maintained contact with my therapist, and began seeing a psychiatrist. I recognized that what was happening was beyond my control and that I needed help. I increased my Zoloft dosage, and began taking naltrexone in an effort to stop drinking once and for all. I can see that alcohol isn’t doing me any favors. I use it as a coping mechanism, but it has become part of what I need help coping with. As lost as I had become, I never truly lost touch with reality. I think I was in denial of how bad my depression and anxiety were, but simultaneously, I never stopped asking for help.
I began reaching out to my support. My sister, my neighbor, my coworker who had a baby mere weeks before me and was dealing with similar feelings herself. I began opening up about the way I was feeling. Slowly, but surely, I recognized the thoughts of being inadequate were not mine, rather they belonged to the illness. And an illness it is. In most of my time struggling, I had forgotten that I was mentally ill. I was holding myself to standards of people who are well, and wondering why I couldn’t keep up. Much in the way a physical illness limits you, so too does mental sickness. I needed to recover. I needed to rest.
My amazing husband has dealt with a lot in these past 9 months. He has been navigating becoming a father, mourning his old life, all the while his wife has been drowning and lashing out. There were moments I didn’t know if our marriage would survive. I began to lose touch with my love for him. I couldn’t see the big picture anymore, and I often focused so heavily on negativity that I was extremely difficult to be around, let alone love and nurture. He handled it (and still is) in stride. He has stepped up in every sense of the word. He is the best father to our daughter, picking up my slack in the household management, and he has been showing up for me in big ways.
In one session with my psychiatrist, she asked when was the last time I had slept 6 hours uninterrupted? I looked at her, kind of in shock, when I realized it had been a long, long time. Before my daughter was born, sure, but the end of pregnancy sleep wasn’t good, either. At this point, it was approaching a year of broken sleep. Then, she asked, “What about 4?” I told her truthfully, that since my daughter was born, I was lucky to get 2-3 hour stretches. In reality, there were many nights I was waking up every hour. She told me just how important a role sleep plays in postpartum everything. As soon as my husband realized the extent of it, he began handling night time wake ups.
Wouldn’t you know it, my mood immediately began improving. All it took was one to two nights of uninterrupted sleep, and suddenly I began feeling some level of hope. I still struggle with having plenty of energy throughout the day to accomplish all of the things that need done. I still struggle to fill my own cup before pouring myself out. I still struggle with the occasional second-guessing of myself, alongside anxious thoughts wondering if I am good enough. But the difference that sleep has made has been miraculous in my life. It is a gift that I cannot even begin to thank my husband enough for. The cool thing, too, is that my daughter seems to be sleeping better, too. She is no longer being stimulated by the smell of me through the night, so she’s getting longer stretches. It could totally be coincidence, but her development has truly been exploding in this time as well. Part of me wonders if longer stretches of sleep are allowing her to learn and grow at a faster rate.
I am writing this portion of the post from a much better place than I began it. I’m no longer at my breaking point. I’m no longer drowning. It’s not perfect, but it is improved. I have been wrestling with how to articulate this whole motherhood thing.
It’s been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done– growing a human being, birthing her into the world, nourishing her with my own body, and watching her grow, learn, and become more aware of the world around her. My daughter is nothing short of a miracle, and I’m not even religious. The amount of joy that she has brought me is immeasurable. Watching my husband step up to the role of father, from the very moment she was pulled out of my womb has been the most precious and bonding experience. Getting to watch our little girl reach her milestones and begin to love us back, together, has been the most special. Our bedtime routines and family dinners have anchored me all this time.
Yet, I have struggled with pain and darkness. I have experienced long nights that felt as if they’d never end. I had to recover from a major surgery while learning how to take care of a child. I spent those long nights Googling the most ridiculous things, because despite being a nurse and having a wealth of health-related knowledge, it’s just different when it’s your own. The pressure felt unbearable at times. I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the other side of the mental anguish. I fought my husband, pushed him away, made him feel less than.
So how do you integrate those two, vastly different world views? How do you accept that it’s okay for the darkness and light to exist together? That the darkness doesn’t take away from the light, rather gives the light something to shine against.
Maybe motherhood isn’t about choosing between the person I was before the darkness and the person I became because of it. Maybe it’s about making room for both.
For the woman who was hurting.
For the woman who was afraid.
For the woman who didn’t know if she could keep going.
And for the woman who somehow does.
