Tag: Depression

23Apr

Afghan of Exhaustion

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 9 Comments

It’s 9:55 a.m., and I’m sitting at the breakfast table alone with a poorly-made cappuccino. I was too tired this morning to go for a walk before The Hubby left for work, too tired even to have breakfast with my family. It’s a mystery, this tiredness, sneaking around like a cat burglar and stealing a moment here, a good intention there. I eat, I sleep, I exercise, I take ridiculously expensive vitamins, and I’m. still. exhausted. all. the. time. I mean, I’m thisclose to narcolepsy. Really.

Days like this, I feel a bit like a science experiment gone wrong. Some absent-minded professor mixed the blue potion with the red potion, and now I’m fizzing over and shooting purple smoke and growing limbs and speaking in tongues when all I really want to do is bubble quietly in my beaker.

I have a writing deadline coming up (oo, so official am I!) that would be making me spasm with giddy excitement were I not draped over the furniture like an afghan of exhaustion.* I have a lovely start and a lovely end and lots of lovely intentions for the middle, but I’m having trouble peeling my face off the pillow long enough to write a complete sentence these days. Maybe I should just scrap the lovely intentions and write, “At this point, Mr. and Mrs. Sneeth took a nap. A very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, long nap.”**

The tiredness is also presenting problems with the girls. Have you ever tried to make a three-year-old female comply with your No Talking Before Ten Policy? See, when I wake up in the morning, I need an adrenaline shot, a second adrenaline shot, and a team of coffee-buzzed weight lifters with crowbars just to help pry my eyes open. You could say I’m not a morning person. Natalie, on the other hand, wakes up exploding from all the exciting things she didn’t get to tell us during the night. Like, “Mommy! Hey, MOMMY! Good MORNING! Get up! HI! I have something to TELL YOU! I have EARS! And EYES! And… something else! Ummmmmm? Oh, a MOUTH! AND IT’S TALKING! See my buttylunten? [lifting up her shirt] It’s still GROWING! Hey, wanna play with me? I want Fruit Lips for breakfast! I mean Fruit LOOPS! Fruit Loops have all the colors! See? SEE? See all the really, really, really colors? That one is ORANGE! The orange Fruit Loop is a really, really COLOR! SEE? And see all the other colors? Oh my goodness. I really, REALLY like Fruit Loops! AAAAAA!!!!” I, meanwhile, am writhing in pain and groping around the bed for a mute button and begging Sophie to bring me an espresso IV stat.

Any suggestions on how to get my energy back? Because right now, I’m as productive as a dead fish. (Well, maybe not quite dead, but definitely in critical condition.) Natalie would appreciate being allowed to talk again, and the baby would like to be taken off housecleaning duty, and more than anything, I would love to feel like a normal person again. You know, awake.

—
* I really, sincerely apologize for all these similes and metaphors and metaphoric similes and phrases like “afghan of exhaustion.” I can’t help it. I’ve been limiting descriptive comparisons in the Very Official Thing I’m Writing, and the similes have to come out SOMEWHERE.

** The piece doesn’t actually have anything to do with Mr. or Mrs. Sneeth, but! I can see a future for this idea–maybe a short story called “The Grotesquely Long Nap: A Bedtime Story Guaranteed to Put You to Sleep.” Enticing, no?***

*** No.

17Apr

How to Be a Parent

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

When I was a teenager, I babysat several times a week. I loved every minute, and if I had written an essay called “How to Be a Parent” at age fifteen, it would have said this:

First, you play princess Barbies with your adorable four-year-old, then put her in her princess jammies to read princess stories before tucking her into her princess blankets for the night. Then you feed the baby his bottle while watching a romantic comedy and eating sugar by the spoonful dinner. Once the baby is asleep, you’re free to spend the next several hours taking sexy bubble baths, or whatever adults do with their copious spare time. The end.

In the 1,141 days that I have actually been a parent, I have taken exactly three bubble baths (none of them particularly sexy) and learned a few things. Like, the moms of the children I babysat were probably cleaning frantically for seven hours before I came over. Also, the parents had probably lost a cumulative year of sleep training that adorable four-year-old to stay in her princess bed all night. And normal adults, those with actual responsibilities during the day, don’t stay up until 2 a.m. drinking wine in their lingerie by candlelight. At least not often.

—

The relative who came to visit us when we brought Natalie home from the hospital was just trying to help, I know. But everything about her help got under my skin, crawled around, and gnawed at me like a swarm of chiggers. I scratched back pretty hard, I’m afraid.

I felt like all those years of babysitting had earned me a PhD in childcare, but I had no idea what to do with my own daughter. My mind boggled at the fact that this tiny person was completely dependent on me. What if I didn’t dress her warmly enough? How could I know if she was eating well? What was making her so miserable that she had to cry? I felt like I should be confident and relaxed, but I doubted myself at every turn, and my relative’s comments further prevented me from finding my own way of mothering. They made me feel 200% a failure.

—

The “I would nevers” started innocently enough: I would never leave my baby strapped into a swing all day. I would never use the television as a babysitter. I would never ignore my children. I wasn’t trying to be supercilious at all. I just knew I loved my little girl and wanted to learn from all the parenting mistakes I’d seen.

But then, the third trimester of my pregnancy with Sophie lumbered down and squished out my energy overnight. My energetic two-year-old was suddenly a pig-tailed tornado, and I kept falling asleep three words into story time. “Sesame Street” and “The Backyardigans” became very, very important to our survival. I started falling asleep at night under a palpable cloud of mother-guilt.

—

Natalie and I went out on a mommy-daughter date this week. We walked through a park, Natalie chatting incessantly about everything she saw (“Look, there’s a flower! And a bird! And another flower! Ooo, look, there’s grass! Did you see the grass, Mommy? The grass, over there? Did you see it?”), and then shared a cup of ice cream. It was perfect. I hadn’t paid attention lately to what an amazing little girl she is, bubbling over with sweetness and enthusiasm, and I was blown away.

I wish so much that I could do more for her. Maybe if Sophie cleaned the house for me, I could give Natalie the one-on-one time she deserves, but you know babies–too busy lying around, being cute. But despite my imperfections as a mother, my daughter has a vast, beautiful heart. She is happy and creative, and she knows I love her with everything I have. She knows, and that is enough for now.

—

We’re on the journey back into the sunlight, but this time, I’m not looking at other families for validation (At least our daughter eats her vegetables, yada yada yada). Instead, I’m deeply humbled by the other moms and dads who are struggling to be the right parents for their children. I’m encouraged to see other families who, through their aching, ache for one other. I’m so grateful to know I’m not alone in this shaky business of being human.

Things change. Children learn their way in life as parents temporarily lose theirs. “I would never” becomes “I’ll do my best,” and we fumble our way through apologies. We learn honesty and grace. Our rose-tinted glasses crack; we see our children for who they are. And through each struggle, each fight for the relationships most precious to us, we dive deeper into the mystery of unconditional love.

15Apr

Leafshade Living

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I’m having a heavy week. It’s not bad exactly, just dappled in shadow like leafshades on the grass.

Sophie’s been a fitful version of herself. She’s allergic to bananas of all things, and I can’t shake the feeling that I betrayed her trust by feeding them to her, even though she loved them. Especially because she loved them. This is such a non-problem compared to Celiac Disease or lymphoma or epilepsy or spina bifida–should I go on?–but I keep thinking about banana nut pancakes on Saturday mornings and deflating in tiny puffs.

The weather is on crack, of course, but no one wants to hear more about rain. No, wait, sun. No, rain again. April, get thee to rehab.

I’ve started an intensive workout routine called “walking around.” I am enough of a wimp that circling the neighborhood every day leaves me breathless and sore and feel-goody the rest of the time. The idea was to build up my nonexistent energy, get my blood flowing enough to wash the breakfast dishes without collapsing into a puddle of wife-slush. What I didn’t count on was loving the effort. The steady push-pull of bright air in my lungs. The rhythm of feet on pavement. Wild wisteria, children playing soccer, twilight reflecting off the city’s peak. Twenty minutes a day to expand my hunchback life.

I’ve also been sorting through the tantalizing sludge of What Do I Want To Do When I Grow Up?, except this week, it’s I Finally Know What I Want To Do, So How Do I Do It? If I ignore the time factor (specifically, how I have none), I feel ready to write for broader surroundings. This blog is my cozy little house where I can wear pajama pants all day, let the dishes pile up, and spill my unedited guts. I feel safe and happy here, but I’m aching to get out the door, maybe wear heels and sparkly earrings, give my creativity a big breath.

Now that I’m looking for them, the opportunities are overwhelming. In fact, I’m having trouble staying in tune with my goals in the face of so many almost-rights. It’s like chugging a strange cocktail of doubt, hope, turmoil, and inspiration. Can you get a hangover from excitement? I’m ready to see myself as a writer, and it’s every bit as scary as you might expect… multiplied by a majillion or so.

Taxes are done, I have a functional computer again, and the kitchen floor may just get mopped this week. I am madly in love with my family, and I know what I want to do when I grow up. I’m thinking this heaviness won’t last much longer than the smoky crack-clouds pausing outside our window.

26Mar

Emotional Flambé Days

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Mothering a three-year-old is not quite as easy as, say, demolishing a brick house with my forehead.

“Natalie,” I explain. “You need to blow your nose. It will help you breathe!”
She shoots me a look of petulant exasperation. “But I don’t WANT to breathe!” Huff.

She’s developed her own brand of logic that runs headlong against mine like a sumo wrestler, ridiculous but unmovable. It wouldn’t be so bad, this earnest illogic, except for the flammable emotions spilling out during each encounter. Tears gush. Drama overflows. Three-year-old PMS sinks its fangs into every other moment, gnaws, flings, thrashes, and leaves it in a mangled heap on the floor.

“Natalie?” I mumble through half-open eyes. “I’m not ready to get up yet. Why don’t you go play with your toys for a while?”
“Noooooo!” she wails, melting into a pool of little-girl despair. “Nooo, I don’t want to! I CAN’T! All my toys are BROKEN!”

I know very well how mothers and daughters can push each other’s buttons. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of female intuition, and shared blood tends to amplify shared grievances. I really do know. I just thought I had another ten years or so before we’d be slumped under the covers, crying from different sides of the same frustration. I thought that these young years would stay light and happy, that I would be the fun playmate-mom and she would be the cheerful Stepford-daughter.

“Why are you crying?” I ask.
“Because I don’t want to sleeeeeeeeep,” she wails from beneath her covers.
“Well, you need sleep so you can be happy tomorrow.” (Again with the logic.)
“B-b-b-b-but,” she sobs, “I AMMMMMMM happy!”

I cringe every time I use the words “need” or “have to,” proof that I consider her opinions inferior to mine. (Even if her opinions are that she should have chocolate ice cream for dinner and stay up all night watching “Toy Story” and balancing glass plates on her sister’s head, they’re still valid. They’re still an honest and valuable expression of her desires, even if they’re wrong. Right?) I worry that she’s developing too slowly because I haven’t been reading with her, playing with her, teaching her enough. (She should know Italian better by now, not to mention be fully potty-trained… Or, at the very least, be able to read at a second-grade level like our friend’s daughter of the same age. Right?) I sink under the guilt of days when I’m too tired or too “down” to give her the attention she craves. (I should be able to put on a brave front for her sake. Right?)

“Natalie?” I sigh. “I have a headache and need you to be quiet for now.”
“But!” she shrieks. “But don’t you wanna hear my song? My really, really, really long song? Listen! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE! MAYONNAISE!”

Of course I don’t see the humor until later, when I’m detailing the hardships of my day to Dan (“…and then my head literally exploded into little bits all over the rug because she wouldn’t stop singing about mayonnaise”), and he doubles over laughing. I wonder some days if my parenting skills have expired, if I’m doomed to spend the rest of my life as a sour-milk mom. I gravitate toward hopeful theories too, when I’m in less-pessimistic moods, like she’s just going through a stage or I’m still medically classified as a post-partum mess. (And this too shall pass.) Who knows? Maybe all that matters is that I still love her enough to hurt over our battleground relationship, and that when she starts school in September, I will look back on these emotional flambé days with nostalgia.

Right?

13Mar

Swampwater Poetry

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

I hate neediness, sometimes in others, always in myself. It feels like a sticky, leechy organism turning my control center into a swamp, wiggling occasionally out of my mouth in search of fresh blood to suck. It makes my bones extra-porous, as fragile as spidered glass. It makes me feel infantile, like some hideously anorexic, hormonal version of a baby. Helpless.

But sometimes I can’t help being a choking, splintering, blood-sucking mess. (Look for Dan’s upcoming book: Vampire Wife: Why Mommy Lives on a Dustpan in the Basement Now.) I run through the checklist of “I Needs”:

  • A nap every morning.
  • A nap every afternoon.
  • Some illegal, trucker-endorsed substance to keep me upright between naps.
  • A maid.
  • Regular exercise.
  • The energy to begin contemplating the idea of potentially starting regular exercise.
  • The energy to get up early, and thus be dressed and hygienic before breakfast, and thus feel less like a flea-ridden hag all morning.
  • My own personal motivational speaker. (That means you, Matt Foley!)
  • A lobotomy, or
  • A happy switch.

I hate this list. It’s like a swampwater poem. It makes me crave a chemical bath for this brain that can’t seem to find its self-sufficiency. It makes me want to tattoo a disclaimer on my forehead: WARNING: Flea-ridden hag, four months post-partum. Take her words with a grain of salt and/or a hormone pill, and if you value your own blood, KEEP AWAY FROM THE FANGS!!!!!

The doctor we talked to says that yes, of course, not to worry, this is all perfectly normal for a pregnant woman. Which–and let me be perfectly clear on this subject–I am not. Please, someone, tell me that yes, of course, not to worry, this is all perfectly normal for me, in my definitely and completely un-pregnant state of non-pregnancy. Please tell me that you’ve been here, done this. Please tell me that daily life will get easier and that I will be able to do a whole sit-up again and that this squirmy, slimy neediness will abate before I suck my family and friends dry.

25Feb

Tribute

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Today is the most perfect tribute to springtime I’ve ever experienced. Those of you still slodging through gunmetal winters, take a deep breath and imagine…
Pastel-tinted sunbeams bounding through your open window.
Tufts of sky-scented breeze rolling end-over-end like cotton balls at play.
Ice cream swirls of pink and white dripping from shy tree buds.
Bird chirps like flutes and oboes and tinkling celestas, piping grace notes over the mid-day traffic.
Fresh laundry line-dancing (ha!) for the joy of warmth and light and newly unfolded air.

Springtime in Texas, where I grew up, is really more a melty form of winter. The sky takes on the surly color of old pipes, leaking gray water continuously until summer hits it suddenly with a wrench. Texas never really gets cold, but its Februaries and Marches suck out inner warmth like zombies, complete with the drooling and the clammy outstretched fingers and the diseased-cow moaning. (“Uuuuunnnnnnnhhhhhhhh.” I have no nostalgia whatsoever for the sound of spring.)

This winter has been a rodeo for me… and not just me, I suspect. One of our friends told us the other night that he has two wives–a cold-weather one and a warm-weather one. I understand, though I often wish I didn’t. Surviving winter can be a fight, a constant bundling and layering and gritting teeth; it’s a struggle to unclench, a struggle to thaw. However, when the outside world suddenly softens and blooms, I feel myself relaxing. My pent-up tensions drift away on a stray breeze. I lighten up.

There may be a month of winter left, but my mind is bursting ahead into spring. I’m already thinking in terms of strawberries and open windows, flower pots and Easter egg hunts, swinging with Natalie and picking daisies with Sophie. I’m taking the heavy blankets off our bed and planning picnics, and oh, it’s a much-needed loveliness.

What springtime hopes are warming your minds today?

19Feb

Construction Zone

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I know people whose days are shaped like circles, bringing them smoothly back to their concentric beginnings each night. I know of others’ days like squares and rectangles and octagons, structured in short, linear periods. Some ambitious people live in shooting lines, and some spontaneous ones ride out dizzy rollercoasters. Little children play on their days like playground equipment; octogenarians sink into theirs like pillows. PMSing women survive days shaped like chocolate briar patches. And my days? They’re the erratic patterns of an echocardiogram.

That upward peak is my heart bursting into light when one of the girls giggles, and that downward surge is my pessimistic realization of how quickly their joy will be diluted by age. This low point is the laundry basket lid, floating on the sea of my never-ending responsibilities, and this hopeful spike is an uninterrupted hour to pretend I’m Zen. That sudden quickening is a mad dash of courage to leave the house, and this gentle slowing is a half-asleep bear snuggle with my family. The points fluctuate, beeping steadily, a constant gauge of my emotions.

I once overheard someone close to me indicate that “moody” women aren’t worth marrying. That thought has stuck perniciously with me. I think of it during both up and down moments and especially during those dark flat-lining days. I’ve spent numerous birthday wishes on stability. I’ve hammered at my brain, trying to reshape its landscape, trying to replicate those titanium-plated models I envy. After all, multi-colored emotions = moodiness = worthlessness.

But believe it or not, self-performed brain surgery doesn’t work. Not even when I’m desperate for a transplant and especially not when my fingers are skidding on the guilt of being “complicated.” I often feel defective, and, unfortunately, the frontal lobe doesn’t come with a return policy. (Damn frontal lobe.) I guess this is the main reason there are often gaps and caverns and craters of time between my blog entries–because I can’t think of anything un-moody to write about–because no one will want to marry me* if I can’t equalize my feelings.

However, there’s this funny thing about the blogosphere… It’s made up of people–real people, not just unattainably cool, authory ones–who “sit down at a typewriter and open a vein” as Red Smith said. And I’m learning, in large part due to some wonderful, open-hearted bloggers, that nearly every woman is an emotional storybook. I had no idea that so many women found themselves dog-paddling through sudden oceans in their minds. Loneliness. Confusion. Depression. Doubt. Frustration. Irrationality. Pessimism. I also hadn’t realized how many women buoy the world with their hearts. Creativity. Appreciation. Compassion. Hope. Wonder. Devotion. Beauty in a million shades.

I’m still thick in my quest to disown regret, and this might need to become a construction zone. Maybe we women were made this way on purpose, to touch a largely impersonal world with our varying forms of tenderness. Maybe our emotions provide both the balance and the upheaval necessary for life to plunge forward. Maybe vulnerability shouldn’t be shamed or hidden or stigmatized. Maybe I should stop grimacing at my honest reflection on the page. Maybe someone can remind me that the heart monitor’s peaks and valleys and persistent beeps signal above all that I’m alive.

*Except my glorious husband, who insists on liking me despite my chronic unmarriageableness. (::Love::)

© Copyright 2019, all rights reserved.
Site powered by Training Lot.