Mopping

I mopped my floors this weekend, y'all. I know. I know this doesn't sound like a big thing, but for me, it's likely I wouldn't feel better about myself after completing ... anything. Not a marathon, not a jaunt up Mt. Kilimanjaro, not flying to the moon. That sounds overly dramatic but let me explain.
First, a disclaimer. This post is a little break from the norm. It seems every year or so, I feel inspired to write an entry like this, one where I bare my soul and hope for the best. (See June 2012's "I Am A Mom".) So, here we go.
Deep breath. I suffer from postpartum depression. I would use the words "crippling" or "paralyzing" to describe it, but they don't seem sufficient. More like "suffocating" or "all-consuming". More like, "I feel like I live in a sucking black hole and there is absolutely no way out." And here's the kicker: my youngest is 17 months old. She's not that young anymore. The annoying baby blues hornet that buzzes around for couple weeks after you get home from the hospital morphed into a giant, raging dragon consuming everything around it, even after the official "postpartum" period passed.
Here's the good news: in the last four weeks, I have genuinely started to feel consistently better, like for the first time in over three years, I have more good days than bad ones. That is a triumph. Just a few days ago, sweet Josh put his arms around me and said, "I'm so glad that the woman I married is back." Oh man. Me, too.
But here's the reality: after my first child, life was good. I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed being a mother, at how fulfilled I was, and interested in stuff, and at just how happy I felt. My house was not always, or even usually, pristine and I was super tired, but my perspective on these things was so positive. I looked forward to the future and enjoyed my present. I felt eager to wake up each morning and give life another go.
After I gave birth to my second, things were much different. This was a fairly stressful time in our lives anyway, as it was Josh's last year of dental school, which meant we rarely saw him. We were trying to make the enormous life decision of which job opportunity to pursue, where to move our little family, how to begin paying off our vomit-inducing amount of student loans, not to mention how to be parents now to twice as many kids as before and continue being spouses to each other through all of this. So all of this is going on and Felicity is a few weeks old and then a few months old. And this whole time, I can't even conjure up the energy to put on a bra, let alone smile. Doing the dishes was beyond impossible, as was menu planning, budget planning, or any other "planning". This time in my memory is so gray, surrounded by fog. I simply was not happy. I remember Josh coming home one day to me standing in the kitchen, surrounded by a tornado-sized disaster and saying, "Seph, you just look beat down." That's exactly how I felt. Like I had been trampled by the Budweiser Clydesdales and their wagon, every day. Even before I shoveled myself out of bed in the morning, I was beat.
But this was my first time dealing with this, and I really didn't know. I thought it was because I was tired, and stressed, and that Josh was stressed, and we were moving, you know? It wasn't until we had moved in to our next home that I began to think there may be an issue. We had been there about a month and I was still struggling to unpack the house. Josh was settled in to his new job and I was overwhelmed again with trying to get things in order. I remember vividly sitting in my kids' bedroom, surrounded with Rubbermaid containers filled with toys, my back to the wall, sobbing. The thought in my head was, "There is no way. There is no solution to organizing these toys. There is no way the house will ever be in order. There is no way I'm going to survive these next five minutes. There is just.no.way." I remember wondering if this was normal, if everyone was completely and constantly consumed by an inability to do the tiniest task.
I had a small job and that kept me moving forward. I worked about 10 hours a week and my kids came with me and somehow we survived that year.
And then we moved again and I was expecting Number 3. The world was black again. I couldn't get dressed, I couldn't get my kids dressed, there was nothing. Jaylee was born and we were happy to see her and loved her so much, but the depression didn't lift. We bought a house and moved again and again, I couldn't do anything.
When I look back at this experience, sometimes I think the only thing I will be proud of about how I handled this experience is that I didn't stop. My kids still got to school, they ate food every day, and we made it to church most Sundays. Sometimes we even went to play group.
I did not face depression with grace; I'm not sure what doing that would look like, but I'm sure it wasn't me. I laid frozen on the couch, feeling literally that my soul was being devoured, that I would implode at any moment. I had to; life could not go on, feeling so sad and desperate and hopeless and paralyzed. I writhed in bed, under the weight of this beast, the knowledge that I am not good enough at anything, that people are only nice because they feel sorry for me, that I am a complete waste and failure. I slogged through trips to the grocery store, putting things in the cart without fully being able to think through my purchase decisions and hardly able to see the people around me; tunnel vision was very strong. So much energy was being put in to this swirling vortex of awfulness, that there was little left for physical functions.
There were thoughts of suicide. I didn't experience these after giving birth the second time, but they came hard and fast after the third. I am not a person given to many physical vices, thankfully  -  I don't smoke or use drugs or drink any alcohol. These things are not available in my home at all, which is a real blessing, because for the first time in my life, the temptation to use them until I fell into oblivion was not only real, but tangible, as a physical craving. I am not a violent person, but new and horrible ideas of self-harm crept up. I wanted to do whatever it took to get away from these dark feelings, from being crushed to death from the inside out.
I believe in God; I prayed to Him during this whole experience. I wish I could say that the heavens opened and He beamed His love to me like a ray of light and I was cured. That did not happen. I felt like my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling, that I was being bound and gagged and asked to do what's right anyway. I could not feel the divine inspiration that comes to every mother as she strives to raise her children. When people did tell me I was doing a good job at something, it felt like a cruel joke.
I saw a therapist, a psychologist, tried several medication solutions. I walked around in a medicine-induced fog for seven months, my brain entirely unable to solve problems or think anything through thoroughly.
I tried physical exertion. I worked out ferociously and instead of feeling better, found myself sobbing through the workouts.
I watched my friends accomplishing normal things, running a 5K, cooking dinner for their families, showing up to play group wearing makeup and having their hair nicely groomed, and I could not possibly fathom how I would go about doing the same thing. While I was around them (or anyone) I felt stupid and lame and weak and like the charity case friend.
A weird thing about all this was that so little of what I was experiencing was actual reality. As Josh put it once, I live a princess life. We live in a comfortable home, Josh has a stable job, everyone in my family is relatively healthy. My marriage is good. We have food on the table. On paper, things were perfect.
Josh was there for me. Always. He talked to me and held me and listened to me cry. He was endlessly patient. He tried to help me through things.
In some tiny corner of my brain, I knew that. I knew I was lucky, and yet, in my reality, in what I saw and felt and experienced day-to-day, there was nothing happy or golden. Life had no luster or sparkle. The demons were relentless.
As I mentioned earlier, things are finally improving, for which I am endlessly grateful. I mopped my floor. I went for a run. I organized my medicine cabinet. I managed my home while Josh was gone for five days. Each of these truths feels so momentous I literally want to stand on top of this computer desk and scream my delight to the skies.
I'm not sure why I'm posting this. I don't really want to. I don't really want to share my dragons with everyone.
This entry is not intended to induce guilt or pity or thoughts of "I should have helped", "If I'd only known", or anything else. It is not anything. It is simply a statement of what was.
I hope that as you read this, it doesn't feel like it applies to you. I hope you think, "Wow. I really can't relate. If something needs to be done, I just go do it, even if I'm tired. Life is hard sometimes, but that's fine."
But I guess in writing this I'm hoping that if you do relate, if you have experienced some of these same things (whether caused by pregnancy or anything else in the world), you know that you are not alone. I don't know if that helps you. There are times it wouldn't have helped me. But maybe it will.
After going through this, there are a few things that I know, and hopefully they help. 1) You are not alone.  You're not, even when it absolutely feels like you are. 2) God is there. I don't know why sometimes it feels like He's not and I don't know yet quite what I am supposed to have learned from this experience, but I do know that He is there. 3) Just hang on. When it feels the worst, just hang on. You don't have to swim to the lifeboat or even kick. Just hang on to the lifeline. When it feels like there's no hope, just hang on.
I went through this while surrounded with endless support and blessings, way more than I deserved. If you are experiencing it without someone to lean on or while the world is falling apart around you because of a job (or job loss) or health or family crisis or anything else, you have my deepest sympathy and prayers in your direction. Hang on. God is there. You are not alone.
When you can't have hope, I will try to have it for you. Because someone and Someone had it for me. And now I am feeling better. Not every day, but on a lot of days. And that is something to be grateful for. And shout for joy about. I mean, I mopped my floors. Isn't that great?!