Facing the Dragon: The What of a Tale

Those of you who pay attention to these things and read certain blogs are probably already aware of reactions to Time magazine's recent article on the Mothers Act. If you aren't familiar with this proposed legislation...well, I would recommend Googling it, except that all you'll see for pages are the negative reactions, all of which seem to believe that this legislation is designed by the evil pharmaceutical companies to force "dangerous" anti-depression drugs on unsuspecting mothers. Several of them go so far as to suggest that women would be essentially brainwashed into believing they have Post-Partum Depression when they "simply have the baby blues." Some are downright vicious, such as the disturbing Unite For Life website, which calls the act a "Disease-Mongering Campaign." (I found the polls on the side very interesting. Especially the first one. Anyone else find the wording more than a little biased or impossible to answer?)

On the other side are a slew of women who have suffered from PPD, as well as a slew of highly respected organizations such as The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the March of Dimes, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Nurse Midwives, the National Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition, and the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, to name a few.

You might have guessed where I stand on this subject. If you want an excellently written post specifically responding to Time's article and the issue as a whole, check out Catherine Connors' post, which is brilliant as usual and more accurate than most of the fearful anti-Mothers Act sites I examined. For example, the act would NOT, as many opponents would have you believe, mandate PPD screenings for all pregnant women. Nor would it mandate any specific treatment, anti-depressent or otherwise. What it WOULD do is make screenings, treatment (of varying kinds), and support more widely and readily available to all women. Which, to my thinking, is all to the good.

But that's not really why I'm writing.

Reading the various posts and articles and websites stirred up some mixed feelings in me. The subject of PPD and depression as a whole is very real and rather raw. So I'm struggling to even write this post. Odd how what I can talk about with my friends and family becomes difficult here.

I am, in fact, shaking a little while I type.

It's about image, you see, that stupid obsession with seeming. Seeming strong, seeming capable, seeming confident and happy and together and Super Mom who can Do It All. The seeming that led me into a life of masks and deception and manipulation and secrets for over two decades until the maelstrom spun me right down into a pit from which I could not climb.

(I sometimes feel like there should be an anonymous organization for people suffering from depression like there is for alcoholics and other addicts. A place where one could go without fear of judgment and say "Hello, my name is _______, and I am Depressed." Where one could get sponsors and support, and perhaps be pointed in the right direction, enough so that one could finally get over the shame enough to admit the truth to a doctor or a friend or a family member.)

I was, comparatively speaking at least, a high-functioning depression-sufferer (Or whatever you call us. Nutcase seems harsh.). People who knew me better than most knew I had depressive tendencies, that I'd struggled with it from time to time; they even knew the last three years that something wasn't quite right. But no one knew just how bad it was. Not even me.

I was just as good at lying to myself as I was to anyone else. Because if I really admitted the truth to myself, I wasn't going to be able to keep it together.

And I was in trouble.

I won't go into all the details of twenty-plus years of depression, which varied in degree quite a bit over time. Instead, I want to share a little--just a touch--of my experience with PPD. If I can ever get through typing this post and actually hit "Publish."

I had what I thought were the baby blues after DramaBoy was born. I wasn't plunged into despair; I didn't imagine harming my child any more than I figured any parent would when surviving on occasional catnaps and walking around a room for hours with a screaming infant. I didn't feel like I was fully up to the task, but then what new mother really does?

As time went on, however, things started going subtly wrong. Where once I had rushed from work to pick up my precious baby and take him home, I started delaying my arrival. I'd find excuses for staying at work longer. I'd come up with errands that just had to be done and would be easier without an infant. Finally, I stopped finding excuses and just started heading home after work to sit for a few hours, staring at the TV screen, before getting back to daycare shortly before they closed.

Work people thought I was still heading over to pick up my baby.

Daycare people thought I had numerous meetings and obligations filling up my afternoons.

My husband only knew that when he arrived home around 6:30 or 7, I was there with our child and I seemed tired, worn out, a bit dulled around the edges. Only what one would expect from a working mother, right?

And then, when DramaBoy was barely eight months old, I became pregnant again. Completely, totally, absolutely by surprise. The idea of terminating the pregnancy never crossed our minds, but neither of us reacted well. My husband became convinced we would be ruining young DramaBoy's life by bringing in a competitor for attention. I became convinced that I simply would not survive being the mother of two babies.

I was, on the surface, mothering well. I took care of my baby, fed him well, nursed his frequent illnesses, cuddled and loved him. I knew, deep down, that I wasn't doing well. I found reasons to get away any time I could. I fantasized about clearing out the bank accounts and flying off to live the life of a Mystery Woman in the Caribbean. I lived for the hours at work, for his naps and bedtime. I loved him, I missed him when we were apart, but I could hardly stand being with him for more than half an hour.

And now I was going to feel it with two. My incompetence, my failure, my brokenness would be doubled, and I was more frightened than I'd ever been in my life.

My mother flew back to the States and essentially lived with us for a month after The Widget was born. I was able to survive with her there to keep DramaBoy happy and to provide me with companionship and love. Then she had to return to the Ivory Coast. Facing the first day I would be On My Own with both boys...well, that was facing a Dragon that filled me with despair and an overwhelming fear.

I survived. I got by. No one really knew how dark things were for me. My husband saw the most of it as he returned to a wife who was obviously stressed, angry, and full of nothing but negativity. But he couldn't fix it, couldn't save me, so he also became full of anger and despair. And he turned away--or at least, that's how it felt to me.

Meanwhile, I was still working, mothering, dealing with DramaBoy's enormous list of food sensitivities, his ongoing respiratory illnesses, The Widget's chronic eye infections; and people were praising me, calling me amazing, so strong, SuperMom, and I smiled deprecatingly and inside a voice was whispering If they only knew...

I won't go into all the sordid details. My denial over what was going on spread and grew and I started making choices that were incredibly destructive, all the while lying to myself about what I was doing and the immediate as well as potential consequences. My marriage, already troubled, began crumbling.

Finally, the lies fell apart. My marriage fell apart. I fell apart. And I couldn't hide from the truth about myself any longer.

Being more honest with my doctor and my therapist led to a diagnosis of PPD, layered on top of chronic depression. Yes, I was put on Zoloft. No, it wasn't the magic pill that "fixed" me. In fact, things got worse before they got better. A lot worse.

So what was the answer? Well, you see, there's no simple one. Zoloft, eventually, did help bring me out of the pit. Therapy was and is important. Friends and family--an incredible support system--was and is crucial. God was and is essential.

Perhaps I'm wrong. There IS a "simple" answer.

Simply? I couldn't do it alone.

I consider myself "cured" of PPD now, though not of depression. I still struggle. I still have dark times, sad times, hard times. But I no longer have that massive void inside. I no longer descend into despair. I faced that dragon, and I won. But the key was truly facing it, naming it, fighting it--and doing so with support.

I'm still learning how to mother my children the way I would like to. I have some catching up to do. What's different is that I believe I can do it, even though it's going to be damn hard along the way.

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This isn't the whole story. Especially, it isn't truly the story of Why: Why, when I was at the forefront of decrying the idiocy of Tom Cruise and declaring my support of all women struggling with the darkness of PPD, I could not admit that I was struggling with it myself.

I've had a hard enough time just telling you the What. I'll have to save the Why for another day.