This post is third in a series on depression.
When people ask Heather, What do you do, she says, I Mom a lot. Sometimes she adds that she’s also a freelance writer and a Listen To Your Mother director. Before she was a mother, she worked in social work, providing services for people struggling with mental illness. Her words have been seen in Story Bleed Magazine, at Five Star Friday, on BlogHerand Everything Mom. Her story was featured in Redbook Magazineand on Twin Cities Fox 9 News.
He has asked so many questions that don’t have answers and I’m just so tired. I ask him to help his brother. I say, “He’s going to get hurt, can you help him?” He asks, “Why will he get hurt?” I answer through gritted teeth, “He just will! Just help him!” Then he sighs and his big blue eyes look sad and I wish I could find the strength for more patience and less surprising anger.
When I walk into my room to get dressed, I pass the crumpled bed and want to get in it. I want to curl up on my side and cry. I’m not sure why, but I want to do it. I start to walk that way and then I see her, the me in my mind’s eye, on her side in the bed where I am not. She looks like she’s repeating history. She is carrying this disease and she thinks she isn’t and then sometimes she thinks she is this disease. She is me and I am her and she is them and she is not.
She is so afraid that she’s given it to them.
I know that if I were to walk in and find her curled there, I’d think she should get up. I’d think she should shake it off. It’s not her fault she’s there, but she needs to get up, I’d say. Then I’d wonder if some of it is her fault, because I know memories of ridiculous choices can flood in and bring with them the funk, curling her up.
So I get dressed. I wash my face of yesterday’s make-up and I put one foot in front of the other to make sure that I’m not her or them or her past. I fight it because I know that when I do, it gets a little better.
I fake it sometimes, but strangely, most of the time I’m truly reveling in the buried joy. The miraculous happiness that comes through the eyes of my boys. We make a hide-out in a closet and they are thrilled with their flashlights in the dark. I well up with joy because they are who they are and I believe we can change this. Even if it doesn’t stop, it can be lighter, it can get better. Even if they feel it, they can learn that it doesn’t define them. I will tell them. They can learn from the truths we speak over them…
You are lovely. You are worthy. You are good. Just exactly as you are. This heavy weight of sadness, it can never be who you are.
I can say it with words from my mouth, and I can say it by walking away from the bed, uncurled and dressed.
“Can we go to the park?” He asks carefully. And I say yes even though I don’t want to because I know that it’s the right thing to do. I put one foot in front of the other and he rides with training wheels beside me. He says, “You’re great, Mom.” Then through my tightening throat where my heart wells up with this mercy, I say, “So are you, little man.”
“I know,” he says.
I laugh with unleashed joy and I think, please keep knowing…please keep knowing…please…
We are sometimes sadness, but mostly we are grace.
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I’m so glad you’re doing this series! I have been very vocal about my situation with ppd and ppmd and anxiety and it wasn’t until I spoke up and talked about it that I found many of my friends went through the same thing. Sharing it and talking about it and now reading about it is/was a great step in getting through it!
Thank you!
Stephanie´s last blog post ..The Light after the Dark.