No matter what you say, it's a shitty job.

When you become a mother, there are hundreds of things that no one warned you about.  The bleeding nipples, the constant worrying, how you can both love and want to strangle your child at the same time.  For me, ALL OF MOTHERHOOD was a shock because I never really paid attention when people with kids talked before. 

But the thing that I am finding the most surprising, or perhaps the most difficult to deal with is that it has made very clear exactly what my mother did right.  Lately though, it is becoming more and more obvious what she did wrong.  Not that I didn't already go through therapy for a hundred years and deal with all my Mommy blame issues.  Up until recently, I really thought I had forgiven her.  I had decided that I was going to just use what I knew to not make the same mistakes with my child.   And I do a really good job of providing Lila with structure where I had none.

There are plenty of things that I already knew about my mother.  My mother (just like I do) suffered from a debilitating depression through most of my childhood.  Because of this, she had little patience for my greedy desire for attention and would disappear at night to see her friends to be someone else for a few hours and forget her problems.  The depression also made it hard for her to commit me to anything.  No instrument lessons or dance or extra-curricular activities because committing me meant a commitment for her. I also know that she never pushed me, never gave me chores, never taught me to sat goals, never gave me boundaries.  I always just slid by.  I was smart.  I was pretty.  I was a kid and didn't know that I was lacking life skills because I was always able to talk myself out of any setback. 

As a mother suffering from depression, I often find that I am too overwhelmed or exhausted to hear another whiny plea for a toy.  I desperately want to just give in and let Lila watch TV all day and eat whatever the hell she wants because it is REALLY FUCKING HARD to sit there any listen to her cry when I ask her to do the things she needs to do.  But I don't.  Because my job as a parent doesn't allow me to.  And as much as I want to take a handful of Xanax and walk away sometimes, I CAN'T.  I understand the avoidance and withdrawal that my mother needed in order to preserve what little energy her illness left her with each day.  I understand how much easier it would be to just decide I don't really care and just give in.  It is easier to see your child happy than unhappy.  I forgive her for feeling that way.  Because I feel that way every day.

My mother is long recovered from her depression.  She found medication that keeps the worst of it away and has worked out some of her own demons with a therapist.  But here's the thing.  As my child's daycare provider, the person who Lila spends several hours each day, my mother STILL does all these things.  And it fucking infuriates me.

All the things that I demand of my child, all the ways that I try to mould her into a well-behaved, appreciative, cooperative kid is undone every single day.  It seems that each time I pick her up, there is some argument with my mother because she has again disregarded my wishes and given something or allowed Lila to do something I have told her not to.

For example, (and believe me, this is just one) Lila was getting stomach aches.  It occurred to me that she ate grilled cheese sandwiches a lot and those give ME stomach aches.  So I told my mother not to give her any for the entire week to see if she still has stomach aches.  And what did Lila have for lunch THE DAY AFTER I told my mother this?  A MOTHERFUCKING GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH.  And when I asked my mother why the hell she gave Lila a grilled cheese sandwich, she shrugged and said, "that's what she wanted for lunch."  I often have to remind my mother that Lila is 4.  She wants an elevator in her bedroom closet and wants to get a pet Lion.  Four year olds are not allowed to make every decision in their lives.  That's why they need babysitters.

Of course, my mother maintains that she does these kinds of things because she is a GRANDMOTHER and that grandmothers are supposed to spoil their grand kids, which would be fine if Lila went over there once a month.  But that's not even the point.  Little things like this only remind me of why as an adult, I have such a hard time with moderation and why I am  (illogically) crushed if I cannot get people to give me the things I want. 

I have posted a few blogs about my mother spoiling Lila, and you will find plenty of examples here,
here, and also here of how my mother refuses to listen to me with regard to how I choose to raise my child.  In her mind, I turned out just fine and so she must have done things right.  BUT I DID NOT TURN OUT FINE!!!  I am selfish (I was given whatever I asked for), I am lazy and unmotivated (there was never an incentive for doing anything or a punishment for not doing it) , I am very smart but cannot finish anything (no one ever made sure I did)  and I have always been an underachiever (how do you push yourself if no one ever pushed you to do ANYTHING you said you didn't want to do?).  Additionally, it never clicked that other people actually SET GOALS for the things they wanted to do and worked toward them until I was 26.  I always just had things "happen" to me.  Don't even get me started about money problems (my parents' view of money and credit are seriously fucking ridiculous - my mother believes in signing up for every credit card that she possibly can, and then maxing them out and making the minimum payments because "I won't be around that long anyway.  I might as well get the things I want now before I'm dead.  NO I AM NOT JOKING). 

(I have already posted about how shitty I am as an adult HERE)

I KNOW that she gave these things to me. I blame her because my father just went along with whatever my mother said.  And at some point in my mid-twenties, I realized that it was no longer her responsibility and it was up to me to try to change these deficiencies.  And I really thought I had forgiven her because when I became a mother (and subsequently a mother with depression), I UNDERSTOOD why she did the things she did. 

But I look at myself with Lila and I can't help but to be angry at my mother.  Because I don't want to have to instill those things in her.  I don't have any idea how to, because I suck at them myself.  In fact,  I want to be left the hell alone most of the time.  But I know what I have to do.  This isn't some transcendental knowledge or wisdom that I have.  This is what fucking parenting is.  It is all about responsibility.  It is about loving someone enough to do what they NEED even of they fucking hate you for it.  It is filled with difficulty and discomfort and headaches and insanity.  But that's all just the basic part of the job.

Why did she do what was easy with me?  And why does she refuse to listen when I try to tell her that love is not just buying Lila toys and letting her throw several blobs of raw cookie dough at the ceiling so she can laugh when it sticks (nope, not kidding about that either).  It is about setting limits so that she knows what to expect.  It is about making sure she is getting the foods she needs to grow and learn and feel good. It is about telling her that you will not tolerate bad behavior because you don't want her to grow up to be a total asshole.  She does not understand this.  She says she does, but she reverts to the things that I described the next day. 

This makes me feel disappointed in her.  I am disappointed that she didn't do better with me.  I am disappointed that she never bothered.  I am disappointed that she thinks love is about temporary happiness, even if it destroys the future potential.  I am just so fucking sad about it. 

Because you want to know why I blog.

Sunday Stealing!!! Because I LOVE telling you everything!

1. Why did you sign up for writing your blog?
Because Motherhood Sucks!  Duh!  No really, I was insane with Post-Partum Depression and needed to vent.

2. Why did you choose your blog's name? What does it mean?
See above.  I think my blogs name is pretty self explanatory. 

3. Did you ever had another blog?
Yes.  I had one called "SelenaLand" for a long time where I just posted random things I liked and ranted about current events.  I have started and deleted a few others revolving around cancelled television shows.  Oh, and my Depression blog.

4. What do you do online when you're not on your blog?
Mostly I look at Internet porn and radical Christian apocalypse sites.  Usually at the same time.

5. How about when you're not on the computer?
I mostly just drink a lot of coffee and try not to have to kill anyone.  I haven't slapped ANY total strangers this week and that is surprising because Black Friday was this week!

6. What do you wish people who read your blog knew about you?
That I don't TOTALLY hate motherhood.  Only like 85%.  ;-)

7. What is your favorite community in the blogosphere?
I like the Write on Edge people. 

8. What is your philosophy on your blog layout?
I don't have a "philosophy".  I just picked a template. 

9. Tell me about your picture you use to represent you on your blog.
My Profile pic is of a 50s era mother taking something out of the oven and telling her daughter "Just because Mommy loves you doesn't mean Mommy likes you."  Or some variation on that.  That is the theme of a good portion of my posts. 

10. Pick 3 random blogs from your blog roll and tell us about them.
Well, People I Want to Punch in the Throat needs very little explanation.  Attracted to Shiny Things never EVER disappoints me, and what mother wouldn't LOVE Moms Who Drink and Swear (besides really douchy ones)?

11. What features do you think your blog should have that it doesn't currently?
I think it should alert me as soon as anyone interesting visits and then allow me to chat directly with that person.  But I get to set the standards of what "interesting" entails.  I don't want to make friends with some asshole who has 35 ferrets and lives in a basement.

12. What do you consider the 10 most "telling" interests that we would infer from your blog persona?
Hmmm.  Obviously I am into self-torture and masochism. I clearly like to watch a lot of television. I spend WAAAAAAY too much time on the interwebs ("IT'S A SERIES OF TUBES!!!).  I enjoy pie but won't bake one.  I enjoy eating out at chain restaurants.  I like to be left alone...HOW IS THAT ONLY 6 INTERESTS?...I am interested in bad jokes and dark humor.  Perhaps you would somehow intuit that I am also interested in world domination and obtaining super powers, but I don't think I have made that evident on my blog.  Oh and my interest in fire. 

13. Do you have any unique interests that you have never shared before? What are they?
Sloths playing woodwind instruments would be a unique thing that I would be totally interested in.  And I have never even thought of it, let alone shared it. 

14. The best thing about blogging is all of the friends that you make, aside from those folks, do you think your blog has fans?
I like to believe so.  Thousands of people can't possibly just be coming to my blog after searching "Justin Bieber Bulge" like my stats say (true story).  The CLEARLY secretly love my blog. 

15. What's your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?
I am currently obsessed with getting through the holiday season without having to enter the asylum (again).  It's going to be tough, but I now have a pill for that.

16. What are you glad you did but haven't really had a chance to post about?
I refuse to admit that having my child was the best thing that ever happened to me and she is a truly fantastic kid.  Telling anyone that would completely tarnish my reputation. 

17. How many people that first became a blog friend, have you met face to face?
None.  I have to keep my identity a total secret, which is why I use my real name. 

18. What don't you talk about here, either because it's too personal or because you don't have the energy?
I started my Depression blog because Motherhood is depressing enough. 

19. What's a question that you'd love to answer?
"Tell me why people around the world are completely enthralled by you? In other words, how did you become a millionaire from writing your blog?" 

20. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and regretted it?
Not sure what all this entails.

21. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and thought, “Was that overdue!”
Again, I don't understand.  If a person whose blog I read and commented on and interacted with started to act like an asshole, I would simply stop the interaction.  Is this a real problem out in blog land?

From SUNDAY STEALING

Trying Something Out

I have started another blog to talk about my depression and the progress and issues and other things that come with it. (Quick, guess what it's called!)

Because although I am sure that motherhood and depression are somehow linked in my mind, the truth is that this blog here is my "Mommy Blog" and I need to stick to "Mommy things" here.  So I have created a special little home on the interwebs for journaling and complaining and working shit out so that I can become a better, less deranged human being.

Go check it out, and let me know what you think.  You guys have (unwillingly?) been a huge support for me through all this and so it is important that you give me feedback (in the form of comments over there), good, bad or ugly.

Oh, and Follow.  Because I don't want to be that blogger who has 0 followers.

Go Here:

Because Depression Sucks

They really do resemble the mentally ill.

I have heard it joked that having a small child in your house is like living with a crazy person.  And I am here to tell you that I can confirm that it's absolutely true, although to be more accurate, it is like living with a ward full of psychiatric patients.  I know because I just left there.

As many of you know, my depression has been excruciating lately and I was not finding a lot of help from the professionals that I contacted.  Last Saturday, I had finally had enough and I checked myself into the psych ward at the hospital (you were wondering where I was, weren't you?).

I waited until Lila was out and about with her dad for the day and then called my mother and begged her to take me to the hospital (actually, she was more than willing and thought it was the best idea).  I didn't think they were actually going to check me in because I was not threatening to kill myself or anyone else (for a change).  When the doctor told me she wanted me to check in voluntarily or else she was going to check me in involuntarily with a required 72 hour stay, I signed the papers all the while crying and trying to convince the doctor that my child would never survive without me. 

Even in a state that can best be described as desperately useless, I was more worried about my kid than I was about myself.  I felt guilty for leaving her - for NEEDING to leave her.  I felt like I had been so removed and uninvolved for weeks now, and I was finally doing the inevitable.  I was leaving her.  My mother convinced me that she was in very able hands (her Dad is a fantastic father) and that this would truly be better than letting her see me in such a state of utter breakdown.  I knew she was right-in my head.  But my heart told me that I was a deserter.

The ward was a hospital ward with a long hallway with patients' rooms on one side and offices and other useful rooms on the other.  In the middle of the hall was a large open room with a TV and several tables in it.  The TV was always at full volume and the fluorescent lights and linoleum floors make the room harsh and uncomfortable. 

But it isn't the decor that I think was the important part of this story.  It was the people.  They don't separate the truly insane or disruptive patients from those who are depressed or anxious and the crazies ran the place. 

The first person I saw was a guy with a thick black beard and shaved head who just stood in the hall smiling to himself.  He just stood there.  Didn't look up.  Then he tentatively took half a step before smiling to himself again.  I was instantly afraid.  He was totally in his own head and I realized then that I was here with truly ill people. 

There was also a guy who constantly paced the length of the hallway all day and half the night.  When he sat down, he would try to talk to you or concentrate on something to no avail.  He would get frustrated and jump up to walk again. 

There was a woman who barked.  She mostly barked but also liked to repeat everything that people said when she was in the mood.  The first night I was there, they were watching some show on Telemundo that was like America's Got Talent but only showcased children.  At one point, a dance team came out enthusiastically gyrating to annoying techno music.  She heard the music, jumped up and started imitating the dance moves.  Here was a 50+ woman who barked doing some really athletic dance moves.  I was pretty sure she was going to hurt herself. 

There was a guy who was essentially catatonic in a wheelchair who would piss himself and then come to life fighting the nurses who tried to change his pants.

There was a girl who confined herself to her room most of the time except that several times a day (and often in the middle of the night) would come out into the hall screeching, howling and hooting as if she were at some fantastic dance party that only she could see. 

But my favorite memory will always be of The Yeller.  The Yeller was a 70 year old man who came in complaining and bitching but in completely nonsensical sentences.  He literally yelled utter nonsense for 4 entire days, quieting down for 3 hours here and there but mostly going on non-stop.  He just could not shut the fuck up.  He yelled all kinds of interesting gems and I was convinced that if I could just transcribe it, there would be some sense to be made of it.  But I doubt it.  He would walk up to you for no reason looking like you somehow offended him and he'd point at you and say something like (and I quote) "You can tell me abracadabra and put it in the dryer.  But you have to get the user's manual that's in the refrigerator because the sponges need a bath."  After 4 days of him yelling day and night, I decided that ready or not, I needed to go home.

Coming home was really strange for me.  My house looked weird.  Lila looked like she had grown up, and I just felt completely out of sorts.  I knew that the relief I felt from the excessive sadness and anxiety was mostly due to being away from my real life and I knew that it was going to be hard to disappoint Lila, who thought that since I was coming back from the hospital that I was going to be all better.  I am not. 



But all that being said, I found out that I have an incredibly well-behaved and well-adjusted child.  Lila missed me and asked about me often but only cried about it once, at bedtime on the second night I was gone.  In fact, I would often call her at my mother's house during the day and on more than one occasion when my mother asked if she wanted to talk to me she shrugged and said, "not right now, I'm playing."  When I told my doctor about this, she asked if that hurt my feelings and I had to be honest:  I was completely relieved that she was secure in the idea that I was coming back soon.  She wasn't traumatized by my absence and that freed me up to do some of the work I needed to do to get myself in good enough shape to get out of there. 

Like any stay in the hospital, coming home did not mean I was "cured".  It only meant that the crisis had been averted and that the hard work of really getting better was beginning.  Before I left, they made me a prompt appointment with a therapist and a psychiatrist, which boggled my mind since every shrink I had called in the last month told me they were either not taking new patients or wouldn't be able to see me until October.  I have new meds (which I already think need adjusting) and I am still having a ton of anxiety and sadness. 

But now I know that there is help out there.  And I have something that I didn't have when I went in there.  Hope.

The Ghost Mother

Sometimes I feel like a ghost. 

I have been struggling with my depression again and as always it threatens to asphyxiate me and drown out all the good that lives in me. 

But no one ever tells you that when you are a mother and you have depression, you do not get to suffer alone.  The thing you love, the thing that keeps you from being lost completely in the abyss suffers too.

Having a mother with depression is like being forced to be psychic.  You never know what is going to make her angry.  You never know who is going to greet you when you come home.  You never know if there is going to be someone to take care of you or if you are going to have to figure it out yourself again.  This was MY experience.  My mother was depressed.

And against everything I swore I would never be as a parent, this is slowly becoming my daughter's experience as well.

I feel like I am depriving her.  Her mother doesn't want to play.  She doesn't want to go anywhere.  She can't muster the energy many days to leave the house.  And when she does, the rest of the day is shot, because she only has so much patience and will to burn.  She loses her cool when the kid is just being a kid. 

And the more I feel guilty about being sick, the more I want to withdraw - to not subject her to me.  And this makes me more guilty and feeds into this twisted circle that is quickly becoming something of a spiral or a whirlpool dragging me down to God knows where.

The meds have not been helping so I keep going back begging for some kind of help.  "We'll find something that works for you," the doctor said to me today.  But it's hard to watch what I am doing to my kid while the battle wears on. 

And then there's the fear.  The fear and worry that I am scarring her for life.  That I am unable to teach her some essential survival skills that will keep her from succumbing to the same pitfalls and setbacks the threw me into the pit and left me there for dead.  I don't want her to have to ever feel this way.  But if history is any indication, my fears will be realized no matter how hard I work to prevent them.

It is hard to hold out hope for a turnaround.  It is hard when most of the medications and therapies have just led to brief remissions and when substantial lifestyle changes have been sidetracked by this unbearable lethargy.  But I have no choice.  I have my little girl to look after.  She keeps me from being able to give up.  I HAVE to get out of bed.  I HAVE to face the day.  I HAVE to make dinner even when it hurts and is overwhelming just to stand at the stove and stir a pot.  Even when I suck to be around.  She still needs me.

I just hope she will forgive me for all the lost time.

Where else would I vent

Being poor sucks.  Seriously.  Being poor but not poor enough to qualify for State health insurance is even worse.  Because it forces you to have to do stupid things for medical care.

I have been going to a community health center. 

When I first went there I was happy I found it because I was really sick and I wouldn't have to mortgage my kid to get some antibiotics.  Granted, it is in a terrifying part of town and filled with people who smell bad and look worse, but it was cheap and these were actual real doctors who were willing to see me without an up front cash payment.

But as time has gone on, the gratefulness has worn off.  I am pretty sure they have no idea what they are doing and I am not getting anything close to decent health care.

I have Major Depression.  I have been struggling with it on and off for most of my life and in the last 6 months I have been especially dragged down and lethargic.  I am medicated but it isn't working and the waiting list for the Psychiatrist at the health center is (literally) 10 months. 

I have been getting my prescription needs met by a very nice but extremely young (he may not be legal) Physicians Assistant that we will call Aaron. 

My doctor.

Aaron is terrified of me because he knows absolutely NOTHING about psychiatric medications and I have a long and tumultuous history with them.  When I first went to him, I was having withdrawals because I had run out of my meds while waiting for my mail-order supply to come from Canada (yes, it's legal).  And he was happy to write me the script. 

The next time he saw me, I told him that the drugs that I was on weren't working and he upped the dosage.  The next time he added something else to the mix.  He has tested me for Thyroid problems and Anemia and finally today I told him that he has to prescribe me something else because this shit is NOT working for me and I can't be lethargic and miserable all day every day because I am going to lose my family and my job like this.

So, he nervously agrees to put me BACK on a high dosage of Prozac until I can get into the Psychiatry department where I only have about 4 months left to wait. 

But here's the thing.  He wants me OFF the shit I am on entirely before I start the minimal dosage of the Prozac.  I told him this is a huge mistake.  I told him that I will not survive the transition if my previous experience of going off the meds is any indication of the potential for problems.  He told me that he has to be cautious and that there is no other way.  I told him that as someone who has been through the transition, I know that this is dangerous and I will likely end up at the very least traumatizing my kid and losing my job and in the most likely situation will end up hospitalized.  He told me to come back in 6 weeks and to call him if I have any problems, which is easier said than done because when you call there you essentially just get transferred around until you end up on a line that rings forever.

When I went to make my 6 week follow up appointment, the girl gives me a date exactly 2 months from today.  I say to her, "that's more than 6 weeks," to which she replies, "well it's two months...and there's 3 weeks in a month.".

"No, there's 4 weeks in a month, and July and August are long months," I reply.

She gives me this look like she is going to slap me and says, "there's 3 weeks in a month...give or take." 

What the hell am I supposed to say to that?  So I shut up and take my appointment card knowing that I am getting bad advice from my doctor and that the staff is stupid and incompetent. 

I don't feel good about this at all.  What the fuck am I supposed to do? 

Then there's this:

It Starts Today

I suck at self-motivation.  Seriously.  I have found that I always want the cookie or Frappuccino more than I want a hot body in that moment and I almost always pick NAP over EXERCISE when I have an hour to myself. 

But here's the thing.  I can't afford to buy any more fat clothes.  And the ones I have are growing tight.  It's time to face what I have been dreading.

In my mind I look like this:



But in reality I look more like this:



I am afraid to step on the scale but here goes:

155 lbs.  Shit. 

I am joining Wacky Jacqui in her fitness quest and will be posting weekly about my progress. 

Here are my basic goals. I am an underachiever and believe that I should aim low and not be put off by my lack of results so here goes:

• I want to be about 135 lbs so I have 20 lbs to lose.
• I will walk for 30 minutes 3 times a week AND for 15 minutes on my lunch breaks (3 days a week).
• If I go out to eat (which we seem to do a lot in the summer) I will take half my entree home because the portions are always too big. And NO DESSERT.
• NO eating after 8pm.  We always eat dinner early and there is no reason to snack at bedtime.
• 8-10 glasses of water per day. 
• More Fruits and Veggies
• Less ice cream.

Truly, if I can just start to feel less lethargic, that is enough for me. 

Anyone want to join up?  I will be posting my progress on Fitness Fridays and would love if some of you joined us.

Selena

A long slow death

I hated getting out of bed then.  I was about 13 and suffering from a pretty severe case of my own melancholy. Not the way normal teens did.  It was much, much worse.  But it was hard for her to notice.  Because of the way she just sat there.

I used to come down the stairs loudly, hoping it would make her snap out of it.  I thought that perhaps she would put on a show of being okay just for me.  She didn't.

Outside, the sky was always gray - a constant miserable bleakness that only seemed to make the kitchen more gloomy and unbearable than what it was.  I hated that time.

She always sat at the end of the kitchen table in her dark blue furry bathrobe.  It was old and worn in plenty of places and she usually had not washed yesterday's makeup off so her mascara would be smeared around her eyes.  She sat in the dark and held her head up with her right hand leaning closer to the wall, just in case she couldn't hold it any longer, I suppose.

She chain smoked with her left hand.  One cigarette after the other.  As I tried to work around her silence, I would rinse the coffee pot, trying to make some coffee for her so that she would seem more awake.  But she just sat there.  She wouldn't even move when I needed to get into the drawer behind her.  She'd just let the drawer hit her in the back. 

The tip would light bright fiery orange and she'd breathe in and hold.  As she stared straight ahead, she'd seem to relax a bit as she exhaled - a long soft sound that sent the smoke swelling out into the room and sent her back to being still for a few minutes until she suddenly put the thing back to her lips and started all over again in a simple, small, slowly choreographed motion.

She would sit there like this for hours.  Some days I wasn't allowed to turn the light on.  Other days she would just forget.  She would just sit there - sad and alone, silently contemplating some hurt that I had no way of comprehending and that she would never tell me for fear of accidentally passing that inertia on to me. 

The same way I fear I am going to accidentally pass it on to my own girl.  Like killing her slowly with secondhand smoke.

(written in response to the above photo as a prompt at the RedDressClub)

http://thereddressclub.blogspot.com/

I think it's working

I think that the crap I am taking to combat my shitty mood disorder is actually working!

I went back to the Doctor after my last little crash when he told me that my blood work doesn't show anything REALLY wrong with me I nearly collapsed because I just cannot seem to kick this depression in any significant way even though I am always on some kind of (expensive and uninsured) medication. 

He suggested two things.  I try to limit my processed foods because there is some kind of link between people who eat crap all day and people who are insane (not the medical terminology he used) and add Abilify to the crap meds I am already taking.

The things a girl will do to feel normal...

I objected, of course.  I LOVE ME some easy frozen dinners and lunch meat, but he insisted.  Plus, he told me that sometimes adding Abilify to a drug that isn't really effective creates a reaction that makes it work better.  And I told him that since that he didn't tell me I needed to exercise more, I was on board. 

Two weeks later and I feel like my mind is clear for the first time since I had Lila.  HOLY SHIT.  This must be how normal people feel.  I even tried to take a little nap yesterday and wasn't tired at all!

Of course, this is opening up a huge rift inside me that I have done a fantastic job of denying until now.  My relationship is a mess, and I am starting to see that my anger may not be a side effect of the depression after all.  I think that my depression comes from me numbing my negative feelings and allowing them to fester. 

A part of me is worried about what this is going to mean to the state of my family.  Luckily I have a therapist who can hopefully help me to work all this out and not allow me to make any decisions until I am sure that I know what the hell is going on.

It feels good to be free!

Selfish Mommy fucks it up again

Ben had a car accident yesterday.  He was driving home after picking up the kid because I had an appointment to see a therapist after work.  We got a monster thunderstorm yesterday which flooded the highway and so traffic was absurdly backed up all over the surface streets.

About 15 minutes into my session, my phone rang with Ben's stupid ringtone and I turned it off because HE SHOULD FUCKING KNOW I AM IN MY SESSION trying to get myself together so that I don't have to be a total bitch who screams at him about shit he already knows all the time.

When I got out, I looked at my phone and there were 2 text messages from Ben.  The first said, "call me as soon as possible."  The second said, "I totaled my truck".  Now, perhaps you understand that my first reaction was kind of like, "THAT SEEMS LIKE AN UNDER-REACTION!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!! IS EVERYONE OKAY???" And then I thought, "What the fuck!!!! Is my kid okay?"

So I called him immediately and he assured me that everyone was okay, not a single scratch or bruise, and that the seatbelts did exactly what they were supposed to do.  By that time he had gotten home and Lila was resting on the couch watching Pingu (if you are unfamiliar with Pingu, think weird Japanese Penguin Gumby who doesn't talk but has some jibberish language).

I rushed home and was met at the door by an angry and obviously traumatized 3 year old who said, "We tried to call you because Daddy crashed and I was crying and you DIDN'T ANSWER YOUR PHONE!"

"Mommy was in with her doctor and didn't have my phone with me," I tried to explain. 

"I was scared and I cried and I wanted you and YOU DIDN'T ANSWER!!!"

Yet another failure under Mommy's belt.

Rationally I know that it wasn't my fault and I could never have known.  In my mind I assume that if I had a CAR ACCIDENT or some other emergency, that I might call more than one time knowing that the liklihood that a person would answer the phone when they were in therapy is pretty slim.  But hey, I'm the insane one going to therapy, right?

But a part of me feels sad that I wasn't there.

Later that night, I tried to talk to Lila about it to figure out just how upset and traumatized by it she really was.  And it turns out that she was more concerned about the thunderstorm and the fact that lightening is made of electricity (which scares the shit out of her now that she knows that...thanks Cat in the Hat Knows a lot about that) than she was about the car accident.

Before she drifted off to sleep, she asked me if Daddy was going to get a new truck and I told her we didn't know yet.  She said she would be sad if he didn't have that old truck anymore because he had it when she was a baby.  And I told her that we would all be just fine.

Eat What?

I am going to let you all in on a little secret that I don't like to talk about because it makes people want to slap me.  I only need to get this off my chest because it is causing me some serious problems in adulthood that I have no real experience with, even if I do "know" in an intellectual way how I am supposed to deal with these things.

I have never been on a diet in my life.

Go ahead...let the disbelief wash over you.  And now for the "I'm gonna slap this bitch" part.

Up until I was about 25, I was a naturally skinny girl.  In my teens, I just COULDN'T gain weight and was often accused of having an eating disorder.  Sometimes, I just played along and said I did so that people would leave me alone.  When I was 20, I developed really bad hypochondria (and all kinds of anxiety problems to go with it), convinced that I had a tapeworm or cancer or AIDS and I became obsessed with fat people and how their bodies looked compared to my disgustingly skeletal frame.  I also believed that I was allergic to wheat, eggs, tomatoes, potatoes, milk and Chinese food.  Do the math on that one...it doesn't leave much.

When I got to be about 23, I finally started to fill out.  I assumed my metabolism was just slowing down and LOVED the fact that I was finally able to fill out a bra. 

But it never stopped.  Between 23 and 27, I had gained 25 lbs, which wasn't bad except that I really didn't have the money to clothes shop and my shit generally didn't fit for long.  Oddly, when I had Lila, I had little problem taking off the baby weight, losing all of it in about 8 months (I didn't breastfeed and the anxiety of being a new mother meant I had no appetite either).

But something happened when we moved back to Upstate NY.  In 2 and a half years, I have gained another 35 lbs.  I gained 20 lbs in one 6 month period and that alone made my doctor order tests. 

But there's nothing wrong with me physically causing this.  It's other things.

I hate to exercise.  I NEVER liked sports or sweating for that matter and I really don't get it when people talk about "the runners high".  What I DO enjoy is napping.  Oh, and sitting.  I spend a lot of time sitting and even more time snacking.  In fact, after 33 years of eating whatever I want whenever I want, I think it's pretty much a part of who I am. 

So recently, after another round of tests and a depression whose most tedious symptom is this God-awful exhaustion, I have decided that something has to give or I am going to die.  Literally. It turns out that I weigh RIGHT NOW what I weighed when I was 9 months pregnant and I am really pissed that I got rid of my maternity pants because my jeans DO NOT flatter my overflow at all.  Looking in the mirror the other day, I realized that my belly sticks out further than my boobs ad that is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE for someone who isn't pregnant, but it DOES allow me to park in the "Expecting Mothers" space at the grocery store (who's dumb enough to start that argument?).  And I keep hearing that belly fat is particularly deadly and I swear, its ONLY my belly (since I can't see my ass I am going with that, mmmkay?). 

It's kind of like this guy...

I have never been a believer in diets because I have never known anyone who really enjoys them or keeps healthy when it's over.  And I am just way too exhausted for a total overhaul of my life right now.  But I can tell you that I eat A LOT of bad foods.  Seriously.  Really bad stuff.  And a lot of it.  So I decided that in order to help my energy level (which will make it possible for me to not sleep all the time, which will then make exercise perhaps possible, if not totally fun!) maybe I should start watching what I eat.  Baby steps...right?

I am Bill Murry in What About Bob...

So for the last few days, I have been trying recipes from "healthy cooking" cookbooks and websites and have discovered something astonishing about myself.  Apparently my body knows the difference as soon as it goes in.

Let me explain.  First off, it is impossible for me to be "full" eating shit like skinless chicken breast with herb-roasted vegetables and whole grain pasta.  Isn't there some rule about how whole grain stuff is "more filling" than refined crap?  Because I am pretty sure that when I did the same meal with vegetables cooked with oil and butter and a whole chicken with the skin, I felt full after.  I didn't make my portion smaller (remember, baby steps) and yet I found I was hungry after like 15 minutes.

The other thing is that I am hungry ALL DAY.  Grazing doesn't really work either because I will literally EAT ALL FUCKING DAY.  Apple:  not filling.  Wheat toast with peanut butter: not filling.  10 almonds (because that's a serving size...): Not filling.  14 Oreos are filling.  A giant-size Snickers bar (serving size 3...according to the package) is filling.  4 slices of pizza with pepperoni is filling.

So to those of you who have had some success with changing your eating habits, please tell me...How do you fight being hungry all the time?

On a side note...After a nice dinner of turkey burgers, roasted potatoes and a spinach salad I felt full...for 10 minutes.  Then I found myself picking at the rest of the potatoes while I was supposed to be cleaning up and I am fucking DYING for anything sweet for dessert.  Is there some trick to this or is it really a matter of me never developing any will power?  Because I may just have to choose to be fat forever if I will just feel pissed off and hungry all the time. 


(Images courtesy of google images...they're not really mine)

It is what it is.

Oh God. Here it comes again.


After several days where it seemed to have abated, it is pushing up through the cracks like filthy ground water. I can feel it wetting me, and turning me back into the monster who peers out of her cave at the world but never joins it, and feeds on its own misery.

I have been fighting my depression for most of my life. Even as a kid I remember being somber and morose. I was disappointed a lot. I always anticipated the worst. And as an adult that sort of “realism” won me the nickname “little black cloud” because I was always there to point out how quickly things could go wrong.

I have tried to find joy in the little things. I have managed on a few occasions to claw myself out of this vacuum and to actually breathe the air of normalcy. I gathered enough energy to make a go of moving across the country once; of going to college another time. I even tried my hand being a mother. But those times where I was doing more than just barely functioning were always suddenly drowned in a surge of mud that seemed to pour in out of nowhere and solidify itself before I had a chance to fight through it.

Every so often, as happened last week, I have a break. I have a few days where the going is not quite so tough. I can get out of bed without having to convince myself that there’s something worthwhile outside my dark room. I manage to get dressed and go to work and even play with my daughter without tripping all over myself and making everyone miserable in the process. I am a good mother then, and we read together and I hold her and stroke her hair. She doesn’t worry that I am going to start yelling over little misdeeds and she sometimes seems surprised when I laugh as she drops her (yet another) glass of milk. I love being that woman.

Unfortunately, that is not the person I usually am. Medication only seems to work for a little while. Therapy helps me to have longer stretches of sanity but then I seem to always fall further back than where I started – more sad, more angry, less Me. And I have to wonder, every time: “What did I do now to make this come back? Because I was okay yesterday, but today I am not. “

What’s worse is that it isn’t just all about me anymore. I am no longer the only one suffering, which makes my prognosis that much more unbearable. You see, I lived through my mother’s grueling struggle with this same demon. I watched her shrivel and atrophy so that she could barely move. I saw how she could transform into someone I hated at the drop of a hat. And I swore that I would never do that to my own. Not just because it is cruel and debilitating, but because I never want my baby to have to face this creature in her own world. And aren’t I simply passing all my failures to her?

Instead I hide. My mother kept her sadness out in the open and exposed us all to the constant derangement of drinking and rage and compulsive cleaning. I like to run; to put myself back into bed where I can’t hurt anyone with the things I do to them. Instead I only hurt them with the things I fail to do.

My mother never taught me to swim. She never made me take lessons from anyone else, either. And my whole life I have never felt like I can handle water that is deeper than a bath. This is not only indicative of her inability to give me the basic life skill that could save me, but also a fitting metaphor for the fact that I feel helpless and defenseless against the rising waters that threaten to overwhelm me and I know that I can learn how but I can’t get out of the deep end long enough to catch my breath. I don’t want to be rescued. I just want to be able to swim.

I want my girl to know how to swim.

I want to be able to teach her.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Motherhood: ENVY

I was browsing the library during a break yesterday and came across a series of books exploring the philosophical representations of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Having grown up Catholic and attending Catholic School and always being kind of fascinated by the concepts of the faith (if not actually practicing any of them), I came home and began thinking about how fucked I am if there is actually a heaven and hell. 

For me, it is easy to see how the Seven Deadly Sins run rampant in my life.  And so I have decided to explore the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins and how I am guilty of each of them in relation to my imperfect mothering.  Additionally, it occurred to me just how much a role all of these things appear to play in my current mental state, which is not good. 

The easiest one for me is where I am starting.  But I intend to explore them all in more or less depth in the weeks to come.

ENVY:

Envy - The desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.


I have a serious ENVY problem. Not that I don’t have enough in my life. I do. I have a roof over my head, a warm bed to sleep in and a child who is healthy and functioning. I have a lot to be grateful for and a lot that other people would love to have.

I ENVY “normal” mothers. Now, before you go yelling at me about how “normal” is subjective, hear me out. I have zero desire to be one of the supermoms. I have accepted the part of myself that just doesn’t care about having a spotless house and hosting 8 playdates a month and likes to do fantastical crafts that end up in the pages of Martha Stewart Living. I truly don’t think those mothers are the normal (and perhaps they are slightly insane) and so that isn’t what I am talking about.

I ENVY normal mothers.  I want to be normal, in that I don’t feel like I am drowning in my own self-absorbed misery all the time.  I want to wake up feeling like I can face the day without collapsing from exhaustion before dinner. I want to not snap at my kid when she’s doing normal (annoying) three year old stuff. I want to not lose my temper and break down into crying jags over spilled chocolate milk on a blanket that can be simply thrown into the wash. I want to not feel like I have to pep talk myself just to take a shower. I want to care that my legs haven’t been shaved in months and that my hair hasn’t been out of a ponytail since 2007. I want to actually have some desire to play with Lila, even when I really just sit there and let her orchestrate whatever activity we’re supposed to be doing. I want to not feel like grocery shopping takes so much energy that I literally need a nap when I come home. I want to not have to fake migraines so that I can hide in my bed as soon as her father gets home. I want to be able to do more than one thing in a given day. I want my kid to think I am okay and not to worry about whether she has done something to make me feel sad all the time.

I know that other moms out there can do these things, and that they only feel that way when they have the flu and even then they manage to at least make dinner. I have seen them and heard from them in their comments on my blog. I ENVY that they can do all these things and I have been unable to find anything that helps to pull me out of this for more than a few weeks at a time. I ENVY that their kids seem happy and look well-rested. I ENVY that they don’t have dark circles under their eyes after getting a full night’s sleep. Hell, I ENVY the fact that they sleep!

I ENVY that they know how to do a time out. I ENVY that their kids go to bed without them and without having to be told 400 times to stay still and go to sleep. I ENVY that they don’t worry excessively that they their children are going to be fucked up and insane because everyone in their families is. I ENVY that they manage to function.

The beast strikes again.

I am going back to therapy. 

It's been gnawing at me for a while now and I am fully aware that depression has its nasty black claws around my neck again. 

And then I saw this:

Well, I know that I have a history of depression, and in fact am postivie that I am slipping as you read this.  But the question remains: do I have a "negative parenting style? Lets see...Do I say NO more than I say YES? Check. Do I yell at her more than I think is normal? Probably. Am I critical and easily frustrated? Not so much critical, but certainly easily frustrated. So overall, yeah. That might describe me. So I am an asshole sometimes. But my kid is too!

"Preschoolers whose parents are depressed get stressed out more easily than kids with healthy parents, but only if their mothers have a negative parenting style, according to a new study.


The research, set to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, measured the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in kids' saliva after mildly stressful experiences, such as interacting with a stranger. The researchers found that cortisol spikes were more extreme in kids whose parents had a history of depression and also exhibited a critical, easily frustrated parenting style."

I have a shitload of stupid things every day that push me to the edge and I am not always capable of handling them in a way that is even remotely helpful or constructive. And I sleep a lot more than I should be allowed to considering that I have a small child. I cry a lot and I have no motivation to do...well...anything most of the time. And this is WITH medication.   I want to be functional as a mother and I want to start now.  But as I kept reading I found out it may not even matter.

"Earlier studies have found that people with depression often have abnormal cortisol spikes in response to stress, suggesting that problems with the body's stress-regulation system are a risk factor for — or at least a hallmark of — depression. Several studies have found these abnormal reactions in very young babies of depressed mothers, which could mean the system is disrupted either in utero or very early in life.


But it's difficult to tease out the early influences on the body's stress hormone system. Genetics are likely partially to blame, Dougherty and her colleagues wrote. The changes could come about because of biochemical influences in the womb or because of the way depressed moms interact with their babies. Most likely, it's a combination of all of these factors."

This is my normal kid now...as I am apparently destorying her life.

My depression is something that has followed me throughout my life. I was diagnosed first at 14. I went through my twenties in and out of therapy. My postpartum depression is the stuff of legend. And the fact that I still struggle with it makes me want to scream. But to realize that I am totally ruining my kid's life as well (and not just because I am blogging about her and this shit will still be on the interwebs when she is a teenager) is really upsetting.

"Just having a depressed parent didn't make kids more prone to cortisol spikes, but having a depressed mother with a hostile parenting style did. The study was just a one-time snapshot of stress response, so researchers can't say for sure that hostile parenting by depressed parents causes the spikes, just that there is a correlation.

...If parenting style interacts with genetic and other environmental influences to send kids' stress sky-high, early treatment may help, Dougherty said. Helping parents interact positively with their kids might be especially important early in life, the researchers wrote, because the stress regulatory system is still developing."

Yeah, so according to this article, no matter what I do my kid is fucked. Or not. I mean, I always just assumed that having me as a mother would ensure at least a decade of therapy even before I ever considered having children. But perhaps I am still in the window where I can try to prevent her from succumbing to my miserable fate. 

I wouldn't wish this on anyone, let alone my own flesh and blood.  And I am terrified that one day she will turn on me.  One day she'll be my regular kid who is a pain in the ass, and the next moment she'll be the douchy goth child who writes bad poetry and slits her wrists for attention. 

And this is my kid in 5 years after my depression ruins her life.  Obviously.

In truth though, the motivation for therapy isn't strictly because of her.  I am tired of feeling this way all the time.  I am tired of not wanting to do anything.  I am tired of having to battle my negativity to FORCE myself to type up a new blog post.  I am just tired of being tired.

So I made an appointment with a grad student at the University's counseling program.  I dont have insurance so this seems like a decent option financially.  I dread the idea that this girl will be all of 16 and not know anything about life but we'll see.  Wish me luck.
Here's the full article.
Great! So then the damage is already done. FANTASTIC! I knew it. I ruined my kid before she was even out of the oven. No need to put on the frosting and the sprinkles if the cake comes out burnt.