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Thanks to those who commented on my last post. It gave me a lot to think about. But I’ve decided not to go on antidepressants…for now.

It’s been only 8 weeks since Nathan’s birth, and I’m in the middle of changing everything else in my life, too. I don’t yet feel like my anxiety, when it shows up, is overwhelming me or is dangerous. An awful lot of it is likely to be situational (and due to not enough sunlight, definitely, in the middle of winter), and my situation is about to change, and I’m about to be somewhere with considerably more sunlight and chances to get out and about. And I have noticed improvement, even if it’s not as fast as I would like.

If, however, we get to a more settled place and the sadness and anxiety persist, no matter what else is going on, then I’ll seek that help, and stay on it as long as I need to. I won’t feel any shame about it, either. But in the meantime, I need a little more time to take some swings at coping with this myself.

I have been thinking about why I don’t want antidepressants. It’s at least in part because I’d have to go back to my midwives to get them, and that feels like a defeat…I don’t want to admit to them that I might need them. And frankly, I would just have to say “I want antidepressants” and they’d prescribe them, I’m pretty sure. I’m sure they do so all the time, because they suck and have lots of depressed clients. And I don’t want to be another client they throw drugs at to make up for their suckiness.

That’s probably not the best reasoning there.

And I’m still not sure that I need them. I know I don’t want them, of course, but it’s not the same thing.

And I don’t know what they’d do to me. I find that kind of scary.

And I’m going to be uninsured between jobs, because I can’t afford COBRA. So getting refills is going to be an issue too. They’re expensive.

I have three more days of employment and insurance to get a prescription, if I want it. I need to decide if it’s better to handle these feelings alone, or if I really could shorten the grieving process. It’s tempting, but then, I got through my father’s death without drugs.

I do wonder, if part of the pressure I feel to get the drugs is because my PPD/grief (whatever you call it) makes people more uncomfortable than if I was sad over the loss of a loved one. New moms aren’t supposed to be sad, after all. Not that I’m a Tom Cruise freaky type who’s agin’ all psychological drugs cause they ain’t natural, or something. But it’s a lot harder to know when psychological pain is really too much to deal with.

And I’m not sad all the time; it’s more sudden rainstorms than constant drizzle. I really hate the anxiety more than the sadness, because it makes it harder to sleep and enjoy myself when I do have down time. If I got the prescription, it would be for that reason…so I could relax.

My grandmother had depression a lot, but she was also a bitter, selfish, shallow human being who seldom took responsibility for her own problems. I don’t know if her depression was chemical or just because she was very adept at making herself miserable. I have worked very hard to be as un-like her as possible–she’s sort of my anti-example in life. So maybe taking antidepressants would make me a little too much like her, in my mind.

I need to think about this some more.

It continues. Cover your eyes, those who fear cuteness.

It’s no bearskin rug, but it’ll do. Censored for your protection.

Which is cuter? This:

or this?

I just…can’t decide.

Dear Nathan,

You’re so far away, on the eve of your second-month birthday, away in Texas being spoiled and adored by your grandparents. I think you probably miss me, and that makes me feel guilty, but I know you’ve got many years of my attention coming your way, so I’m sure we’ll make up for it. The next week before I see you is going to go awful slow, though. I look at your pictures all day, trying to get my fix, but it’s a poor substitute for the real thing.

Your daddy tells me you’ve gotten a little sore from all the picking up and cuddling you’ve had the last few days, and it makes me wish I was there even more, fending off well-meaning relatives who want to love you to death. Though who can blame them, really? Still, it must be kind of a shock for you after a fairly quiet month up here, to be suddenly shuttled here and there and squeezed and cuddled to pieces. Don’t worry, it’ll all calm down soon and we can get into whatever our new routine will be.

I miss you, but I’m so glad you’re there and out of here. Our little apartment with its crumbling linoleum and substandard lighting was good enough for me and Matt. We’ve been gypsies a long time, we’re used to living skimpy. But when you came home with us, suddenly I could see how dim and cruddy it was, and it wasn’t good enough for you. For you, I’m willing to up my standards. I’m willing to go back to Texas (or anywhere else, come to think of it) if it means you can have a decent place and maybe a yard or even a dog when you’re old enough. God willing, we’ll be able to give you those things without too much trouble.

Your dad has been in a sort of baby boot camp with you, first here in Brooklyn and now in a slightly easier situation where he has his parents to call on. Still, you are our responsibility, and we’re going to keep being the ones changing and feeding you and getting up with you at night. Our parents aren’t going to get us off the hook on that one, because they paid their dues already, and that’s only fair. We’re groggy and battered, but we’re surviving it, somehow.

You’re an easy baby, but “easy” and “baby” are a contradiction in terms. You can’t do anything for yourself, and even easy babies keep their parents hopping. So don’t take it the wrong way if we seem really eager for you to grow past this stage; it’s not that we don’t love your baby-cuteness, it’s that it’s kind of a grind when we’re your only entertainment 24/7.

Still, there is something about your little cuddly body, and the way you are delighted by shadows and colors and sounds that seem very ordinary to us, because to you it’s all something brand new and amazing. Your smiles are still uncertain and fleeting…happiness is new, too, so you are not always certain when a smile is called for. And somewhere in the random sounds you make I can hear a laugh forming, but you haven’t finished creating it yet. You already get that musky little-boy sweaty smell that is so different from that of a little girl. It reminds me that I really don’t have any idea what I’m in for with raising a boy, but that it will be interesting and hopefully fun all the same.

There is something in the way you look at me, sometimes, when I’m feeding you, with your eyes so round and curious…what is it that fascinates you? It’s hard to believe my perfectly ordinary face can be of such interest. It’s hard not to get a swelled head about it, too. It’s like being a movie star, being stared at by her number-one fan.

You’ve left Brooklyn for good, but you’ll always be able to consider yourself part-Yankee if you want to, a relic of your crazy parents’ decision to go haring off to the wilds of New York. But I know in a year you’ll start babbling with a Texas accent and sound like any other little redneck baby. Someday we’ll bring you back up here and show you where you lived your first 7 weeks. Perhaps it will be when you’re a loutish teenager, bored, and wondering when we’re going to take you someplace interesting, already. Is it weird that that idea makes me laugh? That I look forward to your loutish years, to all of it? But I do. Your life is a book I can’t wait to read.

Visit with Mamaw 2

Originally uploaded by emjaybee.

Yes, this is going to be all cute baby pictures for a little while.

Grooving on the ceiling 2

Originally uploaded by emjaybee.

This pic is from a few weeks ago, courtesy of deanpence.

Sigh. I miss my little guy. One whole week till I kiss his little sweet face again. I’m starting to go into serious withdrawal.

NathanBath

Originally uploaded by emjaybee.

Heh. I told Matt to send me pictures every day if possible. Here’s today’s bath. Man, that’s a fat baby. At least we gave him a modesty bar.

I’ve been here before.

That strange limbo state where nothing is certain, where there’s very little between you and financial ruin. No job yet, no new place to live. No guarantees, no insurance, no real padding against catastrophe.

You peruse the want ads and panic when you don’t see a job for you–or when you see jobs that pay laughably little and worry that you’ll have to take one of them. You hesitate to go out for lunch…that five dollars might be desperately needed and soon. Better not spend it.

I’ve been here before and it sucks, even though, like all risks, it gets your adrenaline going. It wakes you up, whether you want it to or not. When we came up to New York we were jobless and had only enough money to pay one month’s rent on our little place. I remember going near-fetal with fear before I got on the plane from Texas, terrified that I’d made the worst mistake of my life. Matt had to talk me into being calm enough to go through with it. And on the plane up here, I was still petrified. (I would like to take this amusing quote from that entry, though: I don’t think I would ever willingly live in Texas again. I don’t know how anybody does. D’oh!)

Now, I’m fighting the urge to feel that way again. Fear won’t help me, panic just makes it worse. If I can’t feel exhilarated, exactly, I can at least use the nervous energy to get things done. I’ve got a lot of packing to do, bills to pay this weekend. I have to get my apartment rented to a new tenant. Plenty on my plate. I’ll just have to keep comforting myself with the occasional bag of Skittles and fantasies about what I’d do with my lottery winnings.* No time to go fetal.

1. *Pay off all debt. Mine, Matt’s, and our parents’ (and his grandparents). Set them up with whatever kind of house/cars they want, make sure they are able to get all health care they need and not have to work any more.

2. After finding a suitable location, have architect help us design and build a completely energy-efficient, green-as-possible house. Also buy some hybrid cars! Whee!

3. Stop working. Duh. Matt can do his music. I would write. We’d both spend time with Nathan, and travel a lot.

4. Part-time nanny for Nathan. Also oodles of cute clothes, toys, etc. And a college fund.

5. Invest, give to charities, and support sane, healthy, and compassionate political candidates and causes.

6. Personal trainer to whip us into shape.

7. Various fun things that we have never been able to afford; expensive dinners, nice furniture, all the books and CDs we want, Mac computers, the works.

As a way of getting our landlady not to be bitchy about us breaking our lease, we’re (or rather, I’m) running a craigslist ad and sending out emails to get her a new tenant. A 3-bedroom in Brooklyn that goes for 1100/month is a steal, so I’ve been getting lots of responses, although a few who came out last night apparently thought “3-bedroom” meant something larger than what I’ve got. No, you probably can’t fit your 4 teenage kids in here, lady, not unless you like tripping over each other. It’s small. That’s why it’s cheap.

I do try to warn them up front that there’s only one closet and a tiny bathroom and kitchen. Really, it’s best for 2 people or 3 people who don’t mind being cheek by jowl. Or a couple with a (one) small kid. I wouldn’t put two kids in there, they’d probably kill each other.

But what do I know. I don’t really care what people think, so long as somebody takes the place. I’m hoping to be done with it by this weekend, because I can’t really tear things up for packing and keep it clean at the same time.

I can’t wait to get out of here, really. I want to start job-hunting, and mostly, I want to be able to get out and about and not be so cramped up all the time. I’m a lame duck at work, I have no cash to go out and party, and I’ve seen every episode of Law and Order. I need some fresh air and room to breathe it in. New York is suddenly much too small and confining all of a sudden. I’m glad Nathan’s out of it for good. I don’t know how people bring up kids here, I really don’t.

***
Had to do a little talking to myself today, as my self-pity reached somewhat epic levels, and I started to feel like George Bailey deciding to toss himself off the bridge for insurance money.* Not suicidal, mind you, just sort of a general feeling that everything I’ve done has turned to shit and what was the point of my existence anyway, blah de blah selfpitycakes.

I was panicking about not getting a job, running out of cash, possible hospital bills, which would then tank my credit, we’d never get to buy a house, we’d have to live with our families and go on welfare, our car would get repo’d, and Nathan would be unhappy with his poor miserable parents. And all our blathering about trying to find work we loved would be exposed as a sham when clearly we ought to have aimed for lucrative fields which would have us sitting pretty by now, but no, we were stupid and now we’ll be Broke Forever and die early because we couldn’t afford life-saving surgery of some kind. And yes it would be our stupid healthcare-hating country’s fault, but it wouldn’t matter because we’d be dead.

Yes, this IS how my mind works, thank you.

And the thing is…well, at least some of those things could, possibly, happen. If we had enough misfortune, we could lose our car and go deep into debt for healthcare or some other reason and be, generally, fucked for a long time to come. But it’s not worth tossing myself off a bridge for. Poverty sucks donkey ass, and I have no desire to live in it, but I’m not going to give up and die because I might become poor. Provided I live long enough, I most likely will be able to claw my way out of most kinds of poverty, eventually. I’ve done it before. It’s even possible that by the time I’m old our country will have stopped sticking its head up its ass about healthcare, and fair taxation, and job creation, and a host of other issues that keep lots of people like myself on the edge of poverty all the time. It could get better, and I’d like to be around to see that.

*This bothers me, because insurers don’t pay out on suicides, something George would’ve known. He could have at least tried to make his death look like an accident.

Just got out of a meeting about upcoming issues for our department, which of course won’t affect me much, since I’m outta here. Still, it was disconcerting to have my boss not look at me the whole time, as though I were already gone.

Feeling sort of desolate today, anyway. Dammit, I’m just tired of being sad. I have to find a way to think about the hospital and Nathan’s first few days without crying or getting depressed and angry. I mean, it’s part of my life, and his, a big part, and always will be. I have to be able to deal with it when I’m looking at pictures or telling him about how he was born. Without crying. Goddammit. I’m tired of crying. Crying is supposed to heal, and in the past, I seem to remember being able to cry about something, feel better, and move on. Now I just cry about something and then feel sadder because I’m still crying about it. ugh.

I guess part of my trouble is I don’t know how to respond to people who ask about his birth, or how I’m doing. I don’t want to tell my whole traumatic story each time, and I don’t want to share whether my current level of depression is merely “OK But a Little Blue” or else “Crouched in the Corner Sobbing.” I just don’t want to talk it about it, a lot of the time. Not least because then people start wanting to tell me about antidepressants. Which I do not want to have to fuck with.

And then other times, I’m fine. I can talk about any of it perfectly calmly. Those times are increasing, at least, but there’s still too much of the other for my taste. Nothing makes you feel crazier than being swamped by an emotion for no particular reason while you’re just trying to go out for lunch. “Do I want a sandwich or Chinese? Hmm…Oh god, I’m so depressed, shit, here I go…”

I will say this for New York, though; most strangers on the sidewalk are self-absorbed enough not to notice you walking around with your eyes full of tears. Or if they notice, they don’t interfere. And right now, I appreciate that.

The thing is, it’s simpler to grieve for a person. You love them, they’re gone, it’s sad and it hurts for a long time, then you are able to accept it. Other people understand it. But it’s hard to explain when you’re grieving for…what? A process? A lost opportunity? An event? I don’t know you categorize it. I’m grieving for a birth I dreamed about and fantasized about, but didn’t have. And grieving because the one I did have was harsh and painful, and involved being treated like shit when I was at my most vulnerable, and left me with a permanent reminder in the form of a foot-long scar.

I hate that fucking scar.

I understand more now why I was a little obsessed with having another birth, trying again, a few weeks ago…it was the closest I could come to going back and making this bad birth not have happened. But maybe I’m grieving now because even a new, much better birth would not erase this one; it might help me heal, provided I could pull it off, but it can’t change what happened. Nothing can. That’s the bitch about grief, I remember, the anger and pain over the fact that there’s nothing you can do to change what happened. The person is gone, they can’t come back. The birth you envisioned never happened, and the one that did happen was exactly (in most ways) what you didn’t want.

I keep trying to come up with something good about Nathan’s birth, other than Nathan, but really? There ain’t much. That makes it harder to deal with. I can’t come up with a happy version of the story to tell people. I can’t be Happy New Mom. And nobody knows what to say to Saddened But Trying to Get Over It New Mom. And also, I’ve never been into the Drama Queen role. I do not like being the center of sympathetic attention. It makes me feel like a pathetic invalid.

Speaking of invalids, I think about the word “crippled” a lot. It’s a pretty good descriptor for me, emotionally. On bad days, I feel like I’m dragging a bum leg behind me while I try to climb a mountain. It’s slow, and it’s exhausting. The only thought that’s worse is the thought of giving up and letting it cripple me completely.