A Surprisingly Sane Blog

A comment left by a reader a couple days ago jumped out at me for more reasons than one, and I’ve spent the last day or so digesting it.

You live a perplexing life viewed through your blog entries and the one consistent theme is that happiness is just around the corner – as soon as you are freed from an oppressive Church, parents or parents in law, move to the Pacific N.W., get a new home, get a dream home, get a new job and so on.

I highlighted the part that really smacked me upside the head.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the rest of the readers’ comment (and was a bit rightfully offended when I read it… but that’s a different story), I can certainly respect his (her?) opinion and take something from it. Seeing the consistent theme that “happiness is just around the corner” is something that I can see in my own blog as I scroll through the archives, and it’s a topic that I really want to delve into a little more.

Happiness is a different state for a depressed person than to that of a person who does not struggle with severe clinical depression. If you or someone you are close to fights a similar battle to the one I’ve dealt with, you know that “happiness” isn’t necessarily defined as this state of feeling great that puts a smile on one’s face.

Depression is something I have dealt with my entire life. Something that I noticed long before a child should ever realize there’s something “wrong” with them. I remember feelings of severe inadequacy and anxiety hitting me on the playground at the ripe old age of seven years old. My diary from that time, which I remember so clearly writing in my then-childish handwriting, expresses the sadness I felt that I was who I am and how I wish I could be somebody else. I never felt like I “fit in”, the other kids made fun of me horribly, and spending time at other kids’ houses made me feel “less than” them and shabby in comparison.

Those are feelings that no child should every have to experience.

Then there was junior high. I was a year younger than the other students in my grade, thanks so the fact that I was a year ahead in school for academic reasons. I was “smart”, sure. But I was emotionally and physically immature in comparison. Puberty was a nightmare those years when all the other girls were sprouting breasts, wearing deodorant, and becoming young women. I was the tall, gangly-looking thing with braces, zits, and a flat chest. Being a late bloomer was humiliating, but imagine adding an extra year behind everyone else. Yeah, poor me. I feel bad for that dorky young teen who truly believed that high school and the end of Catholic school would bring happiness. I was wrong.

And like that reader said… happiness does always seem to be “just around the corner”. You see, I have to have *something* optimistic to believe in. I am constantly trying to improve myself and my life. I am always looking forward to the next thing that I’m working toward. I always have a positive goal in mind.

Without those things, what the hell else do I have to live for? I am clearly not a very happy person. “Happiness” is a small dose of fairy dust that makes its way into my life once in a while and for short periods of time. Even on the right dose of the correct anti-depressant, most days I just focus on trying to stay “stable”. Stable for a depressed person? It’s being able to get up, get through the day without suicidal thoughts and feelings of hopelessness and hating oneself. It’s the ability to work out, take a shower, eat healthy meals and snacks all day long, and do things that are positive for oneself.

Happiness and feeling on top of things are not the common occurrences for a depressed person that they are for a “normal” person.

Everyone has moments where they feel down, sad, and wish they could be somewhere else. Imagine that being your life every day with small spurts of “hey, that was kind of fun” on an irregular basis. That’s sort of what depression is like. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s easy to judge- there is no way to understand.

So yes, I do believe that happiness is “just around the corner”. I have to, and I’ve learned that it really *is* just around the corner. I look forward to those moments where I look in the mirror and think, “Hey, that’s a pretty special person looking back at me”. It’s not something I get to experience all the time, and I always strive to work towards being able to see that amazing person in myself.

It’s not easy. Depression is a mean, nasty bitch in a bad way.

But you know what? It’s not nearly as awful as the judgement that ignorant people pass on those of us that they can’t understand. It’s easy to look at the flaws someone admits to and have an opinion that they are somehow a bad person or an unfit parent. It’s simple to look through a pair of lenses that block out everything that we don’t like and pretend that what we see is the only “right” way to do things.

It’s a whole other thing to open your eyes and realize that one’s way of life may be something that we can’t understand unless we’ve been there ourselves. And Depression? Think of it as someone’s mean, ugly pet that will never die and is attached by a death-gripping choke chain. You’re never going to understand what kind of pain the Depression’s owner has to go through even though you can see the actions they take to keep that damn pet from biting too hard, and the affects that having that beast chained to them produce.

Just don’t be too quick to judge. You never know if you’re going to be that fucking pet’s next lucky owner.

Current Mood: Alarmed

Current Mood: Sad

While I was in Tucson last week, I had a bit of an epiphany.

I am done having kids.

As in, this baby factory is CLOSED. Forever and ever. Amen.

You see, despite everything I have been through mentally and physically as a result of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, I have been struggling to emotionally accept a fact that I know logically: I cannot handle bearing any more babies.

I’ve said time and time again that I have no desire to have another one. I mean, shit, for awhile I was pretty set on having no children whatsoever, but then life happened. However, in the back of my twisted mind, I have always felt some sort of obligation to have more than just two children. An obligation to whom, you ask? To God, my family, my husband, and even to myself.

As part of my Catholic wedding vows, I promised before my parish priest, family, friends, and James that I would willingly and lovingly accept as many children as God asks of me. I took that vow to heart, and as a couple, James and I agreed to to follow the Catholic beliefs and practices of natural family planning. I truly believed that with enough Faith, I would have a wonderful life raising three or four (or maybe even five) little humans while selflessly practicing abstinence during fertile times if a pregnancy was not desirable in our immediate future.

Well, um, that lifestyle and practice was a huge freaking joke for us. Maybe we just don’t have enough Faith, or perhaps the Catholic beliefs regarding family planning are just a bunch of controlling bullshit (*cough*), but for whatever the reason, we failed miserably at fulfilling those vows the way they were intentionally meant in just about every way possible.

And when I say failed, I kind of mean we ate, threw up, shot the remains, hosted a wild sex party on top of, and threw birth control at all while laughing at the Catholic beliefs on making babies.

Sadly, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. I prayed like crazy, went to church every week, and devoutly volunteered my time in teaching and practicing the Catechism. I mean, not only did I attend Catholic school for eight years, but I was one of my parish’s first female alter servers, the youngest person to be elected onto the Parish Council, served seven years on said council- the last one as vice-president, taught Vacation Bible School and Sunday School for years, served on a couple other ministries, took part in a young adult faith-sharing group, and loved every moment I spent as a Eucharistic Minister.

But you know what? My religion didn’t take into consideration things like severe mental illness when interpreting the Word of God’s thoughts on birth control. Or the physical trauma I experienced when I ripped in half while birthing my first and all the prolapse I suffered after birthing my second behemoth-sized munchkin. Sure, I am as disgustingly fertile as women appear to possibly come, but the truth is, my body would probably only sustain extreme damage with birthing another one of my husband’s huge babies, and I honestly don’t think I would survive another bout of postpartum depression. I am terrified that it would be full-blown psychosis and I’d drive my car off a bridge without ever knowing I hit the ice-cold water, or that I’d be so far over the edge that I’d be nearly comatose while trying to raise three kids.

It’s just not worth the risk. For me, but even more so for my husband and kids.

Well, up until this last week, I still had this idea in my head that maybe, just maybe, I might someday be able to fulfill my wedding vows and pop out thirty-six kids like that special family you see on TV. I’m not knocking them. Each to their own. But seriously? There’s a point when you just gotta ask yourself… does God REALLY want me to just keep pooping babies out of my hoo-haw, or did He give me a brain that can handle reasoning, common sense, and logical thinking FOR A REASON?

And that’s when it dawned on me: maybe God really wouldn’t be angry with me for only having as many as I can handle. Sure, for that one family, one-hundred-thirteen kids is something they can handle just fine. For me, um, well, smart people made Prozac for a reason.

I was unable to accept that idea for a long time. The family and religious values run deep in my veins, despite what a heathen I’ve become in the past year.

But something happened this week while I was away.

I realized that I really am done having kids, and I am perfectly happy with just my two beautiful, incredible girls. I am best off not putting my body through anymore pregnancies or postpartum roller coasters both physically and mentally, and it’s healthiest for my husband and children for me to be on this earth, mentally well, and able to function. Chancing ruining their lives just so I can fulfill some unspoken and possibly unsaid obligation to God and everyone around me just doesn’t sound like something that a loving, kind God would ask of me. If some religion says otherwise, then it can just suck my prolapsed pussy.

When I realized that I felt released of this “obligation” and I felt happy about my choice to stick with just my two cutie-pies, I was ready to do the thing that my sister and I did last week: get a tattoo on my hip/abdomen.

Getting that piece of ink was liberating. A promise to myself and my body: I am done having babies, and I’m not going to worry about birth control anymore because my husband has agreed that is is time to get a vasectomy. Woo hoo! Thank you, James!

Furthermore, I owe my vagina a bit of love, so I have decided that I’m going to get it fixed.

In a perfect world, I could just accept what has happened to the damn thing and move forward. But, the world most certainly is far from perfect, and I’m in even worse shape. And my va-jay-jay… um… well, it’s a scarred, prolapsed battle zone that I know I’ll never be able to accept. Even with all the physical therapy, I will forever have problems and issues related to the prolapse. A feeling of heaviness in my lower abdomen sometimes, and this sensation that my organs are going to fall out of my body if I cough too hard. The cramps during my period are worse than they where pre-babies, and something as simple as using the bathroom is frequently interrupted by the fact that my bladder and rectal prolapse is squeezing off the flow of elimination. As I age, my pelvic floor muscles will only become weaker. Even with the lifestyle changes I’ve made to accommodate the prolapse and the daily exercises I do to keep my pelvic floor muscles in the best shape possible, the prolapse will never be cured and will only get worse with time. While there are risks involved with getting my vagina fixed, there’s a good chance that the outcome would be much, much better than what I have to deal with now.

Are you feeling a bit traumatized yet? Because if not, I AM ABOUT TO GO THERE.

So, in addition to my complaints above, there are the sexual side effects to prolapse. Sex just doesn’t feel right, and I am embarrassed by how it looks down there.  I mean, I suppose it doesn’t look all that bad, but there’s a spot near my perineum where I wasn’t sewn up correctly after my first vaginal birth. The fact that it wasn’t put back together right is something that only a blind person couldn’t see… and some of that tissue has prolapsed beyond the opening. It’s always bothered me because it’s a bit uncomfortable during sex and when I’m, um, wiping down there. Additionally, the sensation of my hoo-haw just kind of sucks now. Organs protruding from where they’re supposed to be are kind of soft and gushy, and even though it’s a nice, snug fit for my husband’s penis… it feels kind of sloppy to me. Like, not loose, just sloppy. Like things aren’t in the right place… because they’re NOT in the right place. My cervix sits low in the canal, my uterus is dropped, and my rectum and bladder are falling inward and down in my hoo-haw. While sex still feels pleasurable and I can orgasm from it, it just doesn’t feel as comfortable or as good as it did before my second vaginal birth. Even with the pelvic floor rehabilitation I went through, there’s still a noticeable difference that I just hate so much. I frequently find sex to be emotionally damaging because I feel so humiliated by what a mess I believe my vagina really is.

Perhaps a lot of other women are in the same shoes I’m in, but I have yet to hear anyone else talk about it, and not a single health professional has told me that what I’ve experienced is all that typical for someone young and healthy like myself. Or maybe everyone DOES feel loose and sloppy after having babies, but somehow they can just accept it and it doesn’t bother them. Yeah, I wish, but that’s just not my experience.

James swears that it feels good in there, but said that instead of feeling like the more rigid canal that it used to be, it feels soft and there’s a lot less friction, even when I’m contracting my PC muscles as hard as I can. That’s probably a gentleman’s way of nicely saying I feel loose and yucky down there, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and try to believe him. Every time I have sex, I realize that while it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of room diameter-wise in there, it does feels soft like he said. Too much lube equals almost zero sensation, even though I still fit nicely around him. It’s a sucky problem to have, and its humiliating to live with. No amount of reassurance has helped me feel otherwise.

Last night I discussed my desire to get my hoo-haw fixed with James. This is not a new topic coming from me, but it’s the first time I’ve been able to talk about it with a very clear head and with my mind made up that I am done having kids. He agreed that it would be worth getting evaluated to see if I would be a good candidate for a successful surgery, and this morning my therapist gave me a recommendation for a gynecologist that has good results with this sort of thing.

So world, not only do I have a new tattoo, but my husband is going to get his baby batter tubes snipped, AND I’m going to start making appointments to find a doctor I trust to fix the prolapse and broken vagina I’ve been burdened with.

Never in my life have I thought that I would actually consider surgery for something like this, but then again, I never thought I was going to end up on Prozac, either. Funny how that sort of thing works out, eh?

And just to give you fair warning: prepare yourselves for all kinds of TMI moments coming up on my blog in the near future. If you think I’ve been bad before, I can only imagine what kind of shit’s going to hit the computer screen next.

Current Mood: Cool

Bear with me… this one’s a hard one to write.

I’ve been thinking about the last couple months today, and I feel like I finally have a pretty clear understanding as to what really happened and why.

I was doing well for a number of months during summer and fall. Moving to Seattle in September, buying a new (very old) house, and learning a new city was a whirlwind. I had no time to dwell on depression. I was mentally stable through that time. October was a little harder, as was November. The near-fatal error happened at the beginning of December: I asked my psychiatrist if I could lower my Prozac dosage by 10mg.

I keep wondering why I chose then to ask. At the time, I realized I was stable as a result of the dose I was on, so why? The decline in happiness in late autumn was directly related to marital stresses that James and I were struggling to get through. Part of the problem was my lack of sex drive, but that was probably more of a result of the issues we were dealing with as a couple. So why, then, did I ask to lower my dose in the first place? I knew it wasn’t going to help anything. I knew I was having a rough time in my marriage. Why on EARTH did I think dropping the medication dose was going to help at all when I knew that was probably the last thing I needed?

The answer I hate admitting slapped me in the face today. The Ugly Truth that I’ve been trying so hard to keep hidden from everyone including myself. An answer that I have, of course, known all along but have been trying to deny. I was hoping I was “well enough” to start weaning back on antidepressants, but I really wasn’t.

By December, I was a few months post-breastfeeding. My body was back to being mine. I wanted so, so badly to believe that the depression, anxiety, OCD, and paranoia that hit full force as a postpartum mental illness was finally subsiding.

It wasn’t, and I was in denial. I knew that I needed that higher dose of Happy Drugs to keep me functioning, yet I thought that maybe, just maybe, I would be alright if I cut back. Well, no, I didn’t think I would be okay, l just really hoped I would.

See, if that plan worked, then I was going to ask to cut back another 10mg, and so on. I thought that maybe it might be possible to wean off antidepressants all together eventually.

Stupid.

The drop in my mental stability happened almost immediately upon taking the lower dose. By the time the holidays rolled around, I was faking a smile half the time. My stomach started hurting chronically. I didn’t want to admit that I could feel myself slipping. Not to anyone, but especially myself.

About mid-January was when I went spiraling downwards. I started to panic a few days before leaving for a dance competition in California. I kept changing my mind about how I was going to get there: drive, fly, drive, fly, rental car, fly, drive, fly… I felt that OCD twitch spring up on me and I kept going back and forth. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and I felt like screaming. It was stupid because the travel plans had already been taken care of, and I knew it. That was just THE SIGN, though. When I realized what was happening, my chest felt tight and I told James I wished he hadn’t bought me the ticket for the convention. There was no getting a refund, so I was stuck, but I was panicking because I had a feeling that it was just going to be another horrible competition experience. The kind where I barely make it through the weekend because I can’t stand being in the ballroom around all the normal, happy people. The kind of weekend that poses as a reminder to how not okay I really am at times. The kind that pushes me over the edge and there’s no ledge to break my fall.

It was.

The rest of January and half of this month were hell. I barely left the house, and I couldn’t handle being social for more than a short period of time. I was slipping further and further into the depression, and I knew it.

Finally, I made the choice to call my psychiatrist and told her what had been happening. That’s when I was put back on my old dose of Prozac and I chose to add a bit of Wellbutrin to the drug cocktail.

For some, that combination works wonders, but it almost killed me. Or rather, while it’s painful for me to admit, I almost killed me. Not the drug, me.

A week off the Wellbutrin with only the correct dose of Prozac in my system has brought me to this point and has allowed me to finally be completely present again, or as “with it” as I ever am, anyway. Now that I can see clearly, I have been reviewing my mental situation over the last few several months. The rise, the fall, and finally, the crash and burn.

And you know what the absolute sickening realization that I walked away with is? I almost didn’t walk away this time. I was so far gone two weeks ago that I don’t remember the week I was on Wellbutrin. Sure, I have my writing to remind me. My insane Facebook statuses, the aching muscles from working out at the gym, the worried creases on my husband’s and friends’ faces when they look at me. Searching for that sign that I’m not going to fall again.

I am not able to survive without the correct dose of the right drug. I cannot fight the demons in my head without the help of a therapist. I am unable to move forward without leaning on others for a bit of help. I will never be that strong person that I thought I appeared to be before I had kids.

I was not well then, either. I never was. Before I had children, though, I had enough time to focus on forcing myself to just keep swimming. After having kids, that was impossible. It forced me to accept that I couldn’t do it without help. My bad days weren’t just MY bad days anymore, they started affecting my husband and kids more than anyone should have to endure. And I should know because I have dealt with serious mental illness that went untreated in people I love for pretty much my entire life.

Except I didn’t really accept it. I wanted so badly to believe that it was a short-term solution. That one of these days I’d wake up and breathe in the morning with clarity without the help of drugs.

Perhaps someday, but I need to understand deep down that the reality isn’t the truth I want to hear: I cannot be well without the antidepressants and extra help.

I just can’t do it. It’s part of me. And, ugh, I hate saying it more than I want to admit. I know it shows no weakness on my behalf, but I just never wanted it to come to this.

But so be it. I can find a way to accept this, smile bravely, and move forward. I have no other choice, and what happened a week ago proves it.

This month marks my 1-year-anniversary of starting treatment for postpartum depression. Even though I didn’t even think to set a New Year’s resolution at the time, it ended up being the year where I finally learned that taking care of myself is an absolute necessity for survival. Imagine that.

I have to wonder: when does postpartum depression no longer qualify as a perinatal mood disorder? And once it’s moved on from “postpartum”, what’s it classified as? Is it just depression? Just a mental disorder? Was it caused by the crazy postpartum hormones, and will it stick with me forever, or was I always just a nut and didn’t snap completely until after I had kids?

I know I am a survivor of a very debilitating mental disorder, and I should be proud of that fact. And I am, trust me. However, I won’t deny the fact that part of me mourns for the fact that I will probably never experience normalcy that isn’t a result of anti-depressants or some kind of treatment. There is so much family history before me that has struggled with depression, and I fear that looking at that history is just a glimpse of my own future. Except, luckily, I wasn’t too proud to seek help.

Today I feel sad. I wish I had a resolution to make that included something “normal” like most people. Like saving a certain amount of money, or starting a new workout routine. Instead, my resolution is to continue trying to get through each day and to stop being the pushover and doormat that I’ve always been. Sure, it sounds like a great resolution when I type it out, but I find it upsetting that I even have to actively force myself to do things that just come naturally to healthy people.

Current Mood: Sad