Blues

Last weekend I spent most of my time in bed, or so it felt. I couldn’t muster the spirit to be a housekeeper, a cook, or a mom to either my pets or my child. Laundry was in smelly piles. The cat was constantly flicking fleas off himself and onto the dining table, my bedspread, and whatever clothes I had left on the bed. Dust was piling up in unseen corners and giving me sneezing fits. My son was copping an attitude and needed some positive attention to steer him down a better path. I had community volunteer duties that needed fulfilling soon. The garden was (and remains) overburdened with dead leaves; drooping, mushy tomatoes; tall, flowering broccoli stalks; and a few firm, too-small tomatoes and peppers that got stuck in suspended animation when the weather turned cool.

Sometimes it’s too hard to bite off chewable pieces of everything on my plate. All I can see is a mound of food that I don’t want to eat. So I starve myself instead, walking away from the table and from everybody. I neglect what might nourish me, such as connecting with my child or taking care of our family home. When depression hits, it makes me feel devalued to the point that nothing around me matters much. I know on some level that knocking something off my to-do list would help me feel better, but I don’t have the psychic energy to move ahead with it.

It’s ironic that the day after I published a piece about parenting becoming easier, I got unaccountably irritated with my child and spent a lot of time letting him be parented by video games and TV. Very little about life is linear. The minute you think you’re blessedly done with a certain phase, you turn a corner and find the same bogeyman waiting for you. I know that depression itself will never be done with me, so that part wasn’t a surprise, although it was unwelcome. And I thought I was smart enough to know that I hadn’t actually turned a corner in parenting; my son and I will forever have personality quirks that lead to clashes, and I definitely don’t think it will ever be easy to be a parent. But maybe I had inflated expectations after an abnormally peaceful week, and they got punctured the moment my son misbehaved or whined at me.

I don’t even remember what triggering thing sent me to bed in the middle of the day. Eventually I found motivation to get up and start being the person my family needs. That’s the person I want to be.