moosh in indy.

I feel I need to mention that my last OB dyed his hair black and on regular occasion missed enormous graying chunks. He sang a little song to the nurses in the delivery room as he was suiting up to get Addie out and he had a total Tom Selleck mustache.

I’m taller than my current OB, weighed more than him when I was 12 years old and he has crazy Willem Dafoe eyes. He also sports a curly gray mullet.

(I’m not going to mention the OB/GYN that thought it was an excellent idea to put me on Lupron. Besides, he was boring looking with a dead fish handshake and a striking resemblance to my sister’s ex-boyfriend. Well. Okay, so I just mentioned him, but parenthetically so it doesn’t count as much.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to be depressed. I mean, it’s inevitable and recurring for so many people so we may as well be good at it, right? Since there’s no snapping out of it and it will eventually end (seriously, it will end.) I may as well have a battle plan in place so I don’t try to do too much or maybe even worse, do too little.

Cody always tells me to “distract myself” so I’m not sitting around wallowing (sleeping) in my sorrows. Distracting yourself when you have very little interest in the world around you can prove to be difficult, but there are a few things that work for me. One of them being cleaning my laptop. It’s very cathartic to go through and delete duplicate files, format your hard drive and back up your entire computer to an external hard drive. I may not have control over my mental hard drive, but I can own my macbook’s. I also do my nails. Not anything fancy. Just trimming, filing and painting with clear polish. Doesn’t require much movement but leaves me with tangible evidence that not everything about me is ugly. (I normally involve my toes too but it’s getting really difficult to reach them.)

Now TV and the Internet can be detrimental to anyone struggling in their brain. I realized a long time ago that violent movies and television shows deeply affect me. As much as my crush on Christopher Meloni rings strong and true, I cannot watch Law & Order SVU. I also do not watch rated R movies, even when I feel okay. I truly believe that sheltering my brain from the sights and sounds of anger, profanity and violence benefits me immensely. However, there are plenty of good shows out there that don’t have a negative affect on me (The Ellen Show for example) and when things are really bad, there’s this entire subgenre of dance/music/talent fight movies that are horribly entertaining to me yet require no emotional involvement on my behalf. (See: Drum Line, Stomp the Yard, Bring it On, Stick It, Center Stage, Step Up, Step Up 2 and the latest cinematic achievement, Step Up 3D.)

Same rules above apply to books. (Which is why Stieg Larsson books are not on my “to read” list. I realize a lot of you will argue “BUT THEY’RE SO GOOD!” I believe you. But they’re not good for me.)

Many of you have to get up and go to work. Many of you miss work because of mental illness, which leaves you at home, horizontal. Sleeping the day away. I get it. Sleep is the single best escape when your brain is hurting and broken. I really have no advice here…because I love sleep. But at least try to distract yourself first, or between naps. And eat. And shower. (Crying in the shower is way better than a lot of other places you could be crying, doesn’t matter if your face gets all splotchy and snotty, it washes right off. And the temptation to use your pillowcase, sleeve or dirty laundry as a tissue is taken away. You’re also alone. Usually. I’m looking at you Addie.)

I am medicated. Unfortunately one of the major side effects is nausea so I’ve been thrown back into bucket hugging mode for the time being. I also feel it very important to say that I hate, H-A-T-E going to the doctor for help. Especially a new doctor. I’m grateful that they are there, but never once have I skipped into an office with joy thinking “OH GOODY! ANOTHER STRANGER I GET TO TELL MY DEEPEST DARKEST FEARS AND THOUGHTS TO!” And medication. I hate it. I hate taking that pill. I hate that I need it. I always have. It’s never gotten easier, even when I know that it is not my fault that I feel this way. So for those of you who hate getting help and taking that pill too? You’re not alone.

I am getting better. And I have every single one of you to thank for it.

So thank you.

My dad does this thing where if I complain about something he comes back with “Well at least you…”

“It’s so hard having Cody gone at school all the time.”

“Well at least you know where he is, he’s not off in Afghanistan somewhere getting shot at.”

“Addie won’t sleep, she’s up crying every night and I don’t know what to do.”

“Well at least you have a baby, imagine all those moms with dead babies.”

We all kind of hate it. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s true or because it hurts so bad to be told your pain and difficulties aren’t all that valid because someone out there has it worse.

I remember in high school a time that I took a lot of pills. A lot. I’m not entirely sure what my goal was in doing it, I was an angsty teenager desperate for attention. I remember arguing with my mom, her berating me for being so distant, when I told her about the pills. She got this look on her face, so disgusted with me. All she could say was “Why the hell would you do that?”

There came a point in my relationship with my mom that I wouldn’t talk to her without a licensed therapist between us. She got us in with someone and when that someone came to the conclusion that something more needed to be done, medicinally,we never returned to the therapist again.

Obviously these are my memories of occasions, I’ve never really discussed them at length with either of my parents. And it’s not my intention to hurt them or paint them in a bad light. They were both raised so differently than one another and I realized a long time ago that there comes a point where I can’t blame my parents anymore because my life isn’t what I expected. They both did the best they knew how with the anomaly that was me.

When I was younger I could mask the pain I’m feeling now with alcohol, drugs and boys. I still remember the first time I had to face my real feelings head on without the perceived safety of reckless behavior.

It was like running full force into a brick wall.

That is how it still feels when I come up against this.

There’s no easy way to cover up this kind of pain and sadness. There’s no bandaid for depression. Alcohol and drugs were crutches for me, they held me above the misery long enough to get through another day.

When it comes to depression there’s only a very long, ugly, dark and uncertain road back to a place you think you remember.

I don’t know why this disease chose me. I don’t know how bad mine is compared to every one else’s but I don’t really care.

I hurt right now. And there’s no quick and easy way out of it that won’t cause pain to either myself or those around me.

The only way is through.

And I’m fighting like hell to make it.

It feels as though there are invisible hands choking me.

The grip is tighter sometimes than others.

At this moment? It’s tight. I’m afraid to move for fear of it truly overtaking me again like it did on Friday.

It gets tighter when Cody isn’t next to me. And at the moment he’s not. And tomorrow he’ll be back at work.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.

Some may say codependency, I say he’s the only safe thing I know when the real me is lost.

I’ve been slinking around the Internet reading the words so many of you have written. I want so desperately to be able to reach out to you, to help you the way you’ve helped me. I occasionally stare at twitter and skype wanting so badly to get involved with my friends and with people whom I’ve never met who are pulling for me. But it doesn’t last. I can’t keep it up.

Maybe you know what I mean?

And sleep isn’t coming easily. Which makes this even harder for me. Being wide awake with my misfiring brain when the rest of the world is fast asleep? It’s hard. Last night an owl kept me company. Which in theory sounds like a lovely thing to have keep you company, but if you’ve never heard an owl? They’re unsettlingly loud. Add the whole dark mysterious forest in the back yard to to equation and I kind of miss the fire trucks, modified mufflers and domestic battles that lulled me to sleep in the city.

This time is hard. Because I don’t know how or when it’s going to end. Or what the future holds for my brain. So much talk goes around about postpartum depression, and I didn’t do so well last time. But if you’re one of the lucky ones who has exasperated antenatal depression? Well. It’s kind of like coming up with a battle strategy for leaving the fire for the frying pan, where you have to bring a tiny little baby and your family along with you.

I want desperately to be worrying about nursery colors and arranging bitty baby clothes, not “How am I going to make it to Friday?”

I am grateful for the tiny little reprieve I got between the shock, the worry, the transition, the sickness, the something may be wrong, the anxiety and now this. My memory is pretty talented to have blocked out so much of what I went through the first time. It covered my postpartum fears with delivery fears and it covered those with antenatal depression fears. It then covered those fears with the fear of miscarriage or something being wrong. Those were covered up with the deep and abiding fear of being sick while the whole situation was covered in the giant overwhelming fear that I would never have another baby of my own to rock to sleep.

As I tear through the layers, vividly remembering each one I also remember there’s a reason I wanted to do this again. There’s a reason people have more babies. There’s a reason people fight and spend and never give up hope to get babies here.

Which also reminds me. Baby books, especially the parts about delivery? Are not a comforting distraction when your brain is wrecked.

This never will be easy for me, but at least someone promised me somewhere along the way that it would be worth it.

(At 1:31…just watch it.)