I'm not a Scientologist, though I do find them highly entertaining. So please don't mistake me for one when I ask you this question:
Where does laziness end and depression begin?
This question has been on my mind for a while. After talking to a friend about depression the other night, I began to seriously consider that maybe I've been more than just lazy these last few months. I have to tell you, the suggestion that maybe I'm not just a slacker was enough to make me want to cry. Out of relief.
* * * * *
This is where you can check out of the post, if you haven't already, as I'm honestly using my own damn blog for my own damn personal journal today. Feel free to eavesdrop, though. You are more than welcome. I just really need to work this out in my head and I do better if I can see it written in front of me.
* * * * *
I'm happy, in a butter knife kind of way. I used to be happy in a samurai sword kind of way. I want that back, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it. Not on my own. Not without help.
The other day, Maguire said, "You've been smiling more lately." Ouch. That's not good. Smiling is good, no? But not smiling so much that a smile revival is remarkable, well, that's not so good. Ironically, it is the fact that I've been feeling a little better that has highlighted the fact that I haven't been feeling like myself for months now. Something like eleven months.
Welcome to the world, baby boy... your mother is going to check out now. Be back in 5.
A few weeks after Cheeks was born, I realized that I hadn't been smiling at my new baby the way I did when my first was born. It was a shock to realize that. I immediately began a concerted effort to smile at him more. The fact that I had to make an effort was enough to tell me something was wrong. Then, a number of weeks later, I started flipping out on Maguire and literally tried to scratch his eyes out totally out of the blue one day. It scared us both enough that I decided to talk to my OB about my newfound homicidal tendencies.
The diagnosis? "Definitely not postpartum depression," but rather low estrogen levels. He slapped on an estrogen patch and told me to check in later if I started feeling better, worse, or inclined to rearrange my husband's face again. Great. See ya.
Remarkably, the estrogen patch did wonders to improve my mood swings. Specifically, it made my desire to swing myself around like a tornado made of arms and teeth and fingernails go away almost entirely. Unfortunately, my family history of cancer spooked me too much to continue the patch. So back to the drawing board, right?
Unfortunately, my OB had no more suggestions. In fact, his response when I told him I felt better but quit using the estrogen patch was, "Well, you do seem fine now, so you don't need the patch any longer. I'm going to write down that you have postpartum depression. Bye."
Huh? What?
Okay, so he didn't immediately say "bye," but that was the end of the PPD discussion. No further suggestions, no recommended courses of treatment, just some random diagnosis that he had said that I specifically did not have just a couple of weeks before. Now that I was better, though, he slapped me with it.
I should have asked questions, but he was not my regular OB and I really just wanted to leave. Honestly, I should have had a chaperone with me, because my judgment was flawed.
Now, months later, nothing has really changed. I'm still breastfeeding and my hormones are still all over the place. If, in fact, I did or do have PPD, it's not fixing itself. Although I'm not violently angry at the drop of a hat anymore, I'm also completely unmotivated and unfocused. I have no energy and feel like all of my emotions are muffled. Hence, the not-so-smiling face I've been sporting for, apparently, quite some time.
This probably comes as a little bit of a surprise to some of my friends, as I get a lot of "I don't know how you do so much" and "you must have a lot of energy" comments. I'm glad my Jedi mind tricks have been working so well, but they've left me sort of stranded out here.
On some level, this is all an illusion. All this "efficiency." I have a lot of balls in the air, yes, but I think it's in large part so that I can increase my odds of just feeling something, albeit a ball striking me on the head as it drops. I overload myself with stimuli in order to feel just a spark.
So something's gotta give.
No energy. No motivation. No interest in things I used to get really worked up about. I won't even go into the state of our house. You can imagine. It ain't pretty. It takes an absolute physical effort to do anything at all.
What energy and enthusiasm I do have, I focus on my boys. I shine it all on them. I do my ever-loving best to not drop that ball. And I think I'm doing a fine job. From the outside, I doubt you would recognize that anything was missing. But I know it could be better. And they deserve that.
This brings me back to my question: where does laziness end and depression begin? How do I know that this isn't just a result of my not exercising or eating better? How do I know this isn't my fault? That sounds so trite, but I'm being serious.
For instance, I know that if I am unwilling to take medication to treat depression, the other option really is to improve my diet and exercise. Organize and plan better meals! Snap out of it! Hit the gym! But how the hell do you do that when you don't even have the energy to take a shower every day?
I should note that my background is in psychology. I should know better. And yet.
Granted, I have plenty to be depressed about, even without the hormone issues from the birth and breastfeeding. The last two years have been a bit, uh, challenging. More than just the storm stuff. I'll tell ya, we've been busy on the misfortune front. Okay, I won't tell ya now, but I'm sure I will someday. In short, I can ace those "rate the stress factors in your life over the last x years" tests right now. Or is it that I would fail them? Whatever it is, I can check "yes" to a vast majority of the "have you experienced any of these events" questions. And I'm not bragging. I'm also not trying to win the "it could be worse" game. Believe me. Mommy don't play dat.
So where does this leave me?
After talking to my friend about all of this and benefiting from her sound advice, I made an appointment with my regular OB. The one I haven't seen since I was still in the hospital after the birth. As luck would have it, she went on maternity leave within the six weeks after I was discharged, so I've never been able to get in to see her and talk about this. I've been floundering with Mr. See-'Em-and-Street-'Em. Unfortunately, it will be the first week of July before I can see her. Ugh.
In the meantime, it looks like I'll be making do with ye ole blog here. Working it out in type. I'll try to give you fair warning before I do so. However, any and all supportive suggestions are more than welcome. Invited, really.
Some of my favorite posts from other bloggers lately have, in fact, been on the general subject of sapped energy reserves, as well as the role these damn blogs can play in working through the sludge. I have to say thank you to those that have gone before me, then, because it made me more comfortable to take the reigns of my own blog and work it for my own purposes. Working it out in type.
I should also note, though, as I did in response to the OB nurse's request to "call if anything happens," that it's not that bad. Seriously. It's just not that good. So I'm going all proactive. Nip it in the bud. Or the almost-full bloom. Whatever.
I have to stop seeing it as defeat to admit that I can't fix this on my own.
Writer. Mother.
