A Mommy Story

I should have known the monster was lurking in the shadows.

Lately I’ve felt out-of-sorts. It started innocently enough – I could blame my uneasy moods and little dark cloud over my head on our employment situation. (Still no jobs yet, by the way.) I might have felt the cold breath of it on the back of my neck at BlogHer.

But over the past week I’ve started running little self-checks in my head, and I didn’t like the results. I’m having trouble keeping up with everything. I’m short-tempered with the girls. I’m occasionally finding a nearly empty box of Cheez-its in my hand with no idea where they all went. Cleaning up the house seems so pointless.

I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. I’m lazy at getting back to e-mails, comments, and even phone calls.

Trying to write a blog post is an actual chore. When I do write anything down, I hate every word I write, unable to find the right words, put them in the right combination, or find the right hook to really capture attention. When I read my own posts, I feel like a broken record. I’m still reading blogs, but I feel like I have so little to contribute that I’m rarely commenting. I feel empty inside.

It really hit me when I was on a conference call about depression with Dr. Myrna Weissman and Families for Depression Awareness. I listened, asked questions, and as the call continued, I started to realize it: I’ve lost interest in activities I enjoy. I fit all of the symptoms.

I’m depressed.

Again.

It was so sneaky this time. Taking advantage of the bad times, and piggybacking on a few negative feelings, growing and feeding them until they were big, bad Negative Feelings.

I’ve also tried to deny it for some time now. After all, I don’t have time to be depressed. I can’t put my life on hold to deal with this. We don’t even have insurance right now. I need to be in overdrive right now for my family – depression does not figure in this plan.

But the monster is out of the closet, and it has completely overtaken me. The last time I was depressed was when I was pregnant with Cordy. It took me by surprise then, too. After all, I was pregnant, it was a planned pregnancy, and it was what I really wanted – shouldn’t I be over-the-moon happy? I was put on antidepressants while pregnant and continued them through Cordy’s first year to prevent postpartum depression.

I was expecting to be depressed again when pregnant with Mira, but I wasn’t. Once she was born, I had some normal postpartum sadness, but it quickly faded and there was no sign of depression. Now over a year later, it seems to have caught up with me, like an unwanted visitor you hope won’t show up for the party.

I hate this. I don’t want to be depressed. I don’t know what to do about it right now, either. As soon as a job with insurance materializes I can get myself to the pharmacy for antidepressants again, I guess. In the meantime, I need to keep pushing through each day, getting all of my work done with minimal lateness and making efforts to be social.

So I guess what I’m saying is I hope you’ll please bear with me as I work through this. I’m sorry I’m sucking at being a good blog friend right now. I’ve spent 10 minutes trying to find an end for this post, something that puts an upbeat end to it, but I’m at a loss this time.

I want to feel like me again soon, instead of this hollow shell of me.