They like me...they really like me!

Well what do you know?  I have received my first blogging award from Kristy over at Pampers and Pinot. 

I will be back later to generate random facts and then pass this along to the next round of deserving bloggers.

In the meantime, go visit Kristy's blog and give her some comment love.  She's funny and expressive and her blog is very nice to look at.

-Selena

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.

Thank you, captain obvious...

When did shit that is completely obvious become "news"?  Today I opened up my interwebs to find this fucking brilliant headline shocking me to attention:

Parenting can take a toll on health, study shows

Oh, really?  Tell me more!!! 
 
Health declines, particularly in moms, due to poor diet and less exercise.

My kid's idea of a balanced meal:  all the colors are there!

First off, I am shocked that it took this long for any science-y person to look around and think to themselves, "Is it just me or do mom's seem to age like 15 years in the first 5 years of their children's lives?"  Part of my not really being particularly desperate to pop a baby out had to do with the simple observation that the mothers I saw around me (not including assholes like Angelina Jolie or Kelly Ripa who can pop out 12 kids in 6 months and be back on the beach in someplace like Bali in their bikinis the next month) did not look good.  They were fat.  They were tired.  They looked pale and/or greasy.  In fact, I theorized that that glorious "glow" that pregnant women had was like the big finale at the fireworks show.  They'd never have that youthful vitality again.

Kelly Ripa on her way
home from the hospital
after the birth of her 3rd
baby.

So onto the obvious details.  As soon as I had my kid, I lost all ability to function for myself.  When she was a newborn, I never ate.  I certainly never slept.  Hell, I didn't shower. The life upheaval involved in having a baby is as stressful as the death of your former self and no one looks good when they're grieving.  I had a child that I was convinced was probably the Anticrhist because her only goal seemed to me to push me to murder.  She cried non-stop for about 6 months (that's how I remember it).  And the doctors all just said, "it's colic.  She'll out- grow it".  Well you know what?  I didn't.  I never got over it. 

As she got older, she took on the attitude of "if Mommy is standing, then I need to try harder," and her entire purpose seemed to be to wear me out.  From the running around, to climbing all over me, to demanding 4 different drinks because each one was "wrong", to refusing to eat anything I put in front of her, to needing to change her clothes 6 times because of one spot of water, to never sleeping through the night until she was 3; everything she did was designed specifically to make me into a zombie.
 
Who can exercise when they can barely get out of bed?  And who the hell are these mothers who work all day and come home and find it possible to spend an hour making a nutritious (and organic and meat-free) meal that their kids will just love rather than just throwing a frozen pizza into the oven? 
Fuck those moms. 

More importantly, besides the "news" that this study reveals and common-sense advice (because don't we all KNOW what we SHOULD be doing?) to take better care of ourselves, this article DOES offer one useful suggestion.  Unfortunately, it is buried at the very end of the article and as far as I can tell has not been repeated in subsequent articles that have been posted on the web:

...Berge said she hopes that the results will push health care providers to pay additional attention to parents.

Community initiatives could also be part of a solution, she said.

“You can’t extend the hours in the day, but by working with others in the neighborhood we can make sure that the parents are taking care of themselves, too..."

Shit..If I had a village of nannies (or even just a village of Mommy friends), I am sure I would have more time to shower and exercise and eat well too. 

To me, this "study" was simply a piece of information that serves absolutely no purpose except to remind me of how unhealthy I am.  Because realistically, until my kid goes off to college or at least becomes a bit more agreeable than the pain in the ass preschooler that she is now, I will likely continue to be too emotionally and physically drained to bother with the necessary chores of meal planning, local vegetable buying and hour-long daily workouts that would be required to get me even remotely into a condition that can be considered healthy.

Because playing WII bowling with my kid while chomping on Goldfish crackers is just not going to cut it.

What the WHAT????

I don't have a lack of material or inspiration.  Every single day, my kid provides hours of humor and bullshit for me to throw a blog post around about.  But for some reason, I am not even slightly interested in talking about it.

I am bored with myself.  I am bored inside my own head.  I am bored with talking about my kid, my self, my life.  I am feeling like everything I put down is miserable and boring.  It's actually pretty hard to keep the bitching fun. 

I am on strike.

I am also hoping that once I give myself permission to not put up a new post if I don't feel like it that this "block" will go away.  Ehhhh...Shit.

However, there is always "Icanhascheezberger" to make me want to die:

Fill in the Blank Friday!

FILL IN THE BLANK FRIDAY!

I used to do all those dumb myspace surveys...so when I found this on The Little Things We Do I thought "HELL YEAH!!!"

1. Something that makes me a great friend is That I will force you to do a guest post on my blog and litter your facebook newsfeed with insane political rants...wait...what was the question?


2. I am a way better mother than Brittney Spears.  I figure that if I set my goals low I am less likely to be disappointed. 


3. I am not Looking forward to my kid turning from a brooding, moody asshole kid to a brooding moody asshole teenager.  Seriously.  I am starting NOW praying for the strength not to strangle my kid the first time she tells me that she hates me and wishes I was dead.


4. If I had to describe myself in 3 words, they would be FULL OF SHIT.  Wow.  I didn't even have to think about that one.


5. Something I'm really cheap about is Everything.  But not by choice.  It's just that I am also broke so Target clothes and Payless shoes are a way of life.

6. Something I'm willing to splurge on is Coffee.  Every day.  Because I like to bring coffee to work and am completely hopeless at remembering to bring a travel cup home when I'm done with it.  Plus, coffee out tastes better than coffee from home.


7. I would trade my soul for a kid who goes to bed easily and sleeps well  in a heartbeat. (Do I need to explain this?)