Really Dark Days

I have a confession to make: after Max was born, I never cried or felt anything resembling dispair. I never wondered if I was making a terrible mistake by attempting to raise a child or if I would ruin his life by virtue of being his mother. Between the sciatic nerve injury to my left leg that I sustained while in labor (ohh, that horrible sciatic nerve) and the ordinary difficulties of learning to nurse and how to sleep again now that I was fully responsible for a person who was both helpless and deeply loved, I had plenty of physical struggles, but no mental or emotional ones.

Pretty amazing, considering that less than ten years before, I had survived some incredibly dark days.

I thought about dying, every day. When I say that I thought about it, I don't mean that I thought about how terrible it would be to die with so much of my life left unlived. I thought about how my mother would be sad but would be able to worry less. I thought about how I seemed to be interrupting everyone's life, including my friends and even the Olive Garden customers who I waited on for a living. I thought about what a relief it would be to not feel the incredible weight of all the pain that seemed to be leaching from me.

On a good day, I would get out of bed, take a shower, and walk to class--and then, at the door to my classroom, I would turn around and walk home, lock the door behind me, and get back into bed. On a bad day, I would never get out of bed at all, except maybe to throw up. And the whole time, I thought about dying.

A lot of strange and terrible things happened to me to contribute to all of this, including my brain becoming (apparently) temporarily but horribly mis-wired. Eventually something even more strange and terrible jolted me out of the black hole that I was in, and I got therapy and medication and realized that I could do more than just hold on, that with help I could fight the darkness and eventually, even if everything would never be perfect for me, even if I would never be perfect, I would eventually feel something besides damaged and gutted and as though I would always be lying in the gutter with the world's foot on my neck.

And I did. And I do. And my life isn't perfect, but I have Max, and Dan, and every day, I get out of bed and I do the best, the absolute best that I can for them. It is my deepest hope that every day, I do it like I'm dying. Because I'm not.

In that year that I was in the dark, I thought about hurting myself a lot, but I never thought of hurting anybody else.

This afternoon, I saw this story--please beware, this is a terrible story and I can't fathom what it must have been like to have to write it, let alone live through it. It's the story of a multiple-murder-suicide in Texas, the only survivor of which is an 8-month-old, and if that's all you need to hear to understand, by all means, don't read this story.

I can't fathom what it would be like to go through everything I went through ten years ago with a child, especially an infant. But women do it all the time--they do it every day. Mostly they find the help they need, and they make it out of the dark. But God, what they go through is unimaginable.

Being a parent, a mother, is a hard job. It's the hardest job I've ever felt compelled to be great at. But it's also the most important thing that I will ever do. I am compelled to do it right, not perfectly, but right. Most mothers, I think, feel this way.

New Jersey Governor John Corzine recently signed into law a bill that requires screening for postpartum depression. There are other bills to this end in the works in a number of states.

I think it goes without saying for those of us--and I know that there are many of us, who've lived through dark days like these. Those of us who've suffered, and our loved ones, should not have to struggle unnecessarily.

It is so sad, just so goddamned fucking sad, that the medical profession, as a whole, has to be legislated to care for the mental health of their patients, not just the physical health. As patients, we have to order our government to order our physicians to care for all of us. I can't believe that this is the way it should be.

I think, I really believe, that every woman who gives birth in America should be screened for postpartum depression. I don't think that this is the heart of our health care crisis, but I think that it is part of it.

Mothers will have dark days, I know. It's the nature of the beast. But eventually, the light should come on. We should be able to leave those dark days behind.

Long Weekend, In-Laws Visiting

AAAAAARGHHHHHHTHTHTHTHTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to Dan: I would have thought it was science.

Molly: Do you think astronomers ever get tired of Uranus jokes?
Dan: I think it's their bread and butter.

23 Months: Dear Max

Dear Max:

Today you are 23 months old. All of a sudden, you are telling me in a thousand ways how grown up you are, and how much you know and can do on your own, and I’m knocked out every day by what an amazing kid you are. It’s not so much that 23 months is so much older than 22 months was, but it just seems so much closer to two than 22 months did. When people ask me how old you are now, I usually tell them “Almost two,” because you are, in so many ways. Daddy spent a lot of time and energy in the last couple of weeks trying to teach you how to say “I’m two!” even though you’re not. He figures that by the time you learn, you actually will be two.

Two weeks ago, you and I were sitting on the couch with an alphabet book, when you pointed to the cover and said, “A. Blue A.” It was a blue A, and when you opened the book and began pointing at things: “Nanana” on the B page, “Shoesh” and “shocks” (shocks can be either socks or sharks, depending on what you’re pointing at, but in this case, they were socks), and, absolutely most hilariously to your father and I, a t-shirt was a “shit,” Daddy and I looked at each other in total amazement. Neither of us had any idea you knew so many words, and I wasn’t sure if we just hadn’t been paying attention or if you’d simply been saving them up, but with great juvenile glee, we’ve been urging you to tell us what it is that we’re pulling over your head every morning when we get you dressed.

Your grandma and grandpa Chase are coming to visit this week. That means that you will probably go for lots of long, slow walks through a borderline-bad neighborhood to the grocery store to buy animal crackers. Grandma and Grandpa don’t know yet that you now demand to be given everything in the grocery store, but considering your record of never throwing a tantrum for anyone but your father or me, you probably will be wonderfully well-behaved for them, and they will buy you anything that you can ask for by name. That is what this particular set of grandparents do. So hurry up and learn some more words, like “swingset” and “Audi” and “discretionary income.”

This month I’ve started to wonder what regrets I’ll eventually have about your childhood. Will I be sorry I didn’t stay home longer with you? Will I wish you knew your family better? As much as I make fun of all of your grandparents, I love them, and they will not live forever. Will I regret that you’re growing up here in the city, where I suspect I won’t ever feel like you are safe, between the shootings and kidnappings and the unbelievable rash of high school kids killed in car accidents?

The answer, I know already, is that I will regret all of these things, and I still wouldn’t change them. I will always wish for more hours in the day to spend running around the park, jostling you up and down on my shoulders to make you laugh. I will miss your whack-a-doo assortment of grandparents and uncles when they aren’t around to make fun of anymore. And I will always be a little afraid for you, because you never love anybody like I love you without the realization that people are vulnerable, and loving them makes you vulnerable too.

The answer is probably that I will have lots of regrets, but that regrets are part of the human condition, and life with you is so limitlessly sweet that I can live with the regret, and the frustrations and annoyances of being constantly responsible for a nearly-two-year-old, and all the rest of it. I can ignore the rest of the flotsam and jetsam that this life brings, all because of you. And when you throw yourself face-first off the couch and bash your adorable nose in, or throw a tantrum in the middle of a public place, or repeat at top volume whatever colorful swear word I just said (all things you did this month), and your Daddy looks at me and says, "Still worth it?" neither of us need to hesitate for a moment before saying to each other, "Hell yes."

Love,
Mama

Still Bershon After All These Years

Schedule for the next month or so:

May24-??? Grandma and Grandpa Chase are here.
June 6-??? God(ess)parents here for God(ess)mama's ELST surgery. Hang in there, lady.
June 17th Dan's birthday
June 18th-25th Grandma Tift is here.
June 21st Max's 2nd Birthday.

Much baseball and seafood-eating about to commence.

Tuesday Morning Max (and Dan)

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Originally uploaded by MollyChase.

My boys.

Boring and Annoying and Obtuse, Thanks. And You?

It’s a fact in your average only child’s life that they will spend a fair amount of time alone. I am proof positive of that, and maybe this was made more true by the fact that I was raised primarily by a single mother who worked at a very demanding and time-consuming job throughout my childhood and adolescence. Couple this with the fact that when I was fifteen, she married a man who deeply valued his privacy and “alone-time,” and you’ll find that being alone is a central factor of my life.

Mostly I value having this particular personality trait—at least, I do now. During a period of time in college, it was probably, in retrospect, an extremely bad idea for me to attempt to live alone which led to a year of mornings that I woke up wondering whether, were I to throw myself out the window of my apartment, if I would actually manage to kill myself or if it would just be an embarrassing incident that would have to be explained to a lot of people. Lots of things have changed for me since then, and my mental health is in nowhere near as precarious a state as it once was, but to say the least, I am not anywhere near as unwilling to be alone as I once was. I value it, like most women who have a job and a husband and a son do.

But I have a problem: I have trouble making friends. Part of the problem is that I am inherently shy, and I know I can’t change that about myself and have learned to cope. The other part is that three-quarters of the time if I’m around somebody who could potentially be considered a friend, I am afraid of being boring and annoying and obtuse, and the other quarter of the time, I suspect, I am boring and annoying and obtuse. Which leads me to avoid situations in which I am given the opportunity to be boring and annoying and obtuse.

We’ve run into a problem: Max needs to be baptized, and his god(ess)parents will not do in the eyes of the Episcopal church. Inflexible as they are, the pesky Episcopals ask that the godparents be practicing Christians. (Don’t worry, Goddessmama, we wouldn’t fire you from the job for anything, but we also would never ask you to play Christian for the sake of Max’s eternal soul.) The practicing Christian that I would have wanted for him unfortunately died ten years ago next month (more to come on this topic.) Father Mark, the perfectly lovely Episcopal priest who is the rector of our particular church, suggested that we ask a couple, the Proctors, to serve as his godparents, that he thought they would be pleased to be asked by us. They have an older son, as well as a little boy who’s a few months older than Max.

We’ve talked to them several times, and they seem like genuinely nice, interesting people. She seems to lack a few of the aspects that I tend to list as foremost for friends— regular and repeated dropping of the F-bomb, a laugh that makes strangers turn around and stare, genuine social awkwardness that coordinates succinctly with my own, that sort of thing—but, after all, there are only so many opportunities to use the F-word in church, and she seems genuine and educated and liberal and just exactly the kind of friend you’d meet in church (word up, Gerry, Joy, and Cristina.)

Yesterday, the husband mentioned that he’d been wanting to get in touch with us and had even looked up Dan’s school email address online, but hadn’t wanted to seem intrusive. Dan and I assured him that we would have been thrilled to hear from them, and in my head, I wished that they had been more intrusive, because that’s really the only way I make friends—when somebody is assertive enough for me to not have to make the first move.

Part of the reason I blog is because I like the fact that this is a great place for me to hide. It’s hard to really connect with people this way, although I do like that there’s a community atmosphere, people are supportive and generous with the friends they do make. And it’s clear to me that they do make friends—the pictures and blog entries published by Dooce, Suburban Bliss, Finslippy, Mighty Girl, and Fussy of their long weekend together are evidence of that. But I particularly value this medium because I don’t have to feel like a raging jackass on public display, due to my ability to edit before publishing.

I’m not sure why I don’t connect with many people. It could be the whole only-child thing again. It could be just a by-product of my built-in reticence. I don’t have a problem keeping friends once I’ve made them. My friend Gerry’s girlfriend has become a great and surprising friend via email over the last few months, and I’m thrilled to have met her. She’s smart and savvy and terribly funny, she speaks her mind, has great taste in books and TV and music, and she just bought a house with one of the finest men I’ve ever known. But I don’t have Mom friends, or really very many local friends at all, and I want them, desperately.

I am lonely, and I’m not sure how to fix it. This has been the case for most of my life. We will probably ask the Proctors to serve as Max’s surrogate godparents, because Mark is dead and Joy and Kyle are in Texas and Gerry and Trina are in Michigan, and I can’t think of any others I’d ever want. It is my hope that the Proctors will become friends, but in my head, I am afraid to ask them, because I fear rejection.

Elementary school was much easier. You and whomever bonded over your love of Fruit Roll-Ups or Elmer’s Glue or whatever, and there you go, you’re friends. But now that I’m 31, it’s harder to find people I click with, or click with people who I don’t already know well.

Gahh. I’m a mess. Fuck it. Does anybody want to be my friend? Anybody?