Chasing Happy
I've avoided writing about this for a long time for a myriad of reasons. Mostly, pride. Right behind that, fear that I would seem ungrateful, which I am not. I wake up every day knowing how lucky I am. How the stars have somehow aligned to bring me this life, this home, this family. Sam and Samaire are my world, and I am blessed blessed blessed to inhabit it.
But.
But.
How to find the words? The words to explain, to put meaning to, to somehow make physical this aching in my chest? The waking in the night, the anxiousness during the day. I *want* to be unerringly happy, and by all accounts I should be and yet there is this place inside me where tears live so close to the surface. Where my skin is raw and where I feel, ultimately and undeniably vulnerable. Is this something every new mom goes through? Something that is just left over demons from my before-life? I don't know. What I do know is that this small sliver of me affects my days. Affects my life in ways I wish it wouldn't.
I skirt around the word "depression." I know what it means, I have been its bedfellow. This seems to be it's cousin, the same and yet still distant. I can fight through it often. It debilitates me not, but it hounds me relentlessly. I have days when I feel on the verge of a breakdown every second and it feels as if it takes all I have to just keep going, keep moving. I don't know how best to describe it. I obviously lack the right words.
I am hoping it's hormones. That I will wake up and it will be gone one morning. Cobwebs finally shaken off. I know that part of it is the return to "the real world" after being home with Maire for so long; of living in my own eden for a while. I know too that it's me figuring stuff out. My life is so wonderful in all its other places, the few I'm still balancing and trying to figure out nip at my heels. And of course, it's me - finding myself again. Trying hard to find, to make, to find value again in the things only I can do. Things that are not of Maire. Not of our home. Not of us, Sam and I.
Of finding the trust that she will still be here, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.
Allowing myself that time somehow, without her.
"Allowing" not even being the right word again. "Learn" to make time is more appropriate. I no longer know how to be without her, nor do I want to be.
I know this is just another journey I'm on in this new life of mine, but so far it is by far the hardest. Maire has been such a blessing in all ways. It seems the hardest part for me in being a new mom is, well, me.
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3 comments:
Life began to balance again for me after Ryan turned one. That first year, I feel like I was a different person than I am now. All the emotions on the surface, small panic attacks, my whole life revolving around the most precious little boy, it was an emotional rollercoaster, good and bad. But it does start to even out a little, i think it's growing pains from you life before being a mom, fitting in with everything else that is you. Hang in there, it will get better.
One thing I haven't been able to shake, are panic attacks at night, before I go to sleep, an overwhelming fear that something will happen to him, sometimes I can't even breathe. They happen less frequently now, but they still happen. Ah, the joys of motherhood. :)
It's awesome to hear I'm not aloe in my neurosis. :)
Yeah, I feel like I may never fully relax again when she's not actually directly in my or Sam's arms....
Thanks, Karen, truly. It makes me feel better.
I've been thinking about this post a lot lately. I am the queen of worry, and now that I have such a precious little baby, there are seriously days when I could puke from worry. I worry about things that are very unlikely to happen. It's crazy and I hope it goes away someday, too. I still make sure she's breathing at night; I don't know if I'll ever be able to handle her sleeping in a different room (I worry about the day that comes, too). Ugh. You are not alone.
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