Happy (?) Birthday to Me

This post contains writing about several topics that could be difficult for people to read about including depression, suicidal ideation, loss, pregnancy, and postpartum experiences. Please take caution as necessary when reading this piece.

I am turning thirty-eight in a few days. It’s a difficult age for me. Not because it’s only two years from forty, nor because it places me squarely in my late thirties and the idea of late-any age rankles me, heavy as it is with a sense of ending, of something slipping away. I am not thrilled about thirty-eight because a friend of mine died when she was thirty-eight, leaving behind her two young kids. Having just had my second baby, I will be thirty-eight with two young kids and I can’t help thinking, what right do I have to this life? And then I think, what if I die too? 

There have been times in my life when I wished myself dead. Never quite enough to do anything about it, but certainly enough to have it become a fixation, a darkness that hovered over me as I moved through my days pretending to be fine. What if I stepped out into traffic right now, I would wonder as I waited at the crosswalk. What if I turned the steering wheel suddenly and crashed my car into the median on the highway? What if I swallowed one pill after another until the entire bottle of antidepressants was gone?  

A strong support system and an intense aversion to having anyone be even remotely upset about something I’ve done have kept me alive through many difficult periods. Sure, I could die, I would think, but then my mom would cry and I feel horrible when I make my mom cry. I’m writing this now with a sense of levity but please know that I recognize the seriousness of what I’m revealing here. I knew how serious these feelings were when I was living with them. 

I was considered at high risk for postpartum depression after the birth of my first son thanks to an existing history of depression and a difficult labor that obliterated my perfectly crafted birth plan. People were worried about me. I must have filled out that postpartum depression screening at least half a dozen times in the first month of my son’s life. Even his pediatrician asked me to complete it, though she was very obviously not my doctor. “Have you been so unhappy that you’ve had difficulty sleeping?” I jokingly asked my one-week-old baby. 

The odd thing was that I did not feel unhappy. Not even a little bit. Instead, I felt almost alarmingly ecstatic. The world felt bright and vibrant and practically pulsing with joy as if I were on an intense postnatal acid trip. To be honest, I was frightened by the feeling. Sorrow was what I was used to. Sorrow I knew how to manage. What was I meant to do with this strange elation, this overwhelming love that felt like at any moment it might morph into a physical form and consume me, a bright, colorful beast that would swallow me whole? It’s no surprise, I suppose, that my joy was eventually replaced with anxiety, a sense of panic that literally stopped me in my tracks at times. I once fell to my hands and knees in the middle of the street while I was out for a short walk in my neighborhood because I was suddenly so overwhelmed with fear that either I or the baby would randomly die that I collapsed under my own weight. It was terrifying. It wasn’t until around six months postpartum that the depression finally set in and my mind began working overtime to convince me that I was not suited to be a mother and that my son would be better off without me. That we would all be better off if I was dead. It was comforting in a way, to find myself back in a precarious emotional state that I understood so well, rather than one that felt new and confusing. My psyche may have been a desolate, dilapidated structure, but it was my desolate, dilapidated structure, with a worn and rotted Home Sweet Home sign hanging on the wall of my mind. 

I came out of it. I lived through it. Somehow, in the years that have followed, I let that structure crumble to dust and have left it behind. I have been happy. Not the weird, unsettling happiness of my initial postpartum period, but a soft, genuine happiness. My life is so lovely. It has its hardships—pain and grief, and plenty of stress—but I find myself now beginning and ending each day with a feeling of satisfaction and hopefulness, and whenever things feel overwhelming, I am better able to see the difficulty for what is: temporary and simply a part of life, not a commentary on my abilities or personality. Not a reason to throw my hands up and declare myself done with this world. 

I waited quite a long while to have another baby because I was worried about messing up this happy life I have stumbled into. Things are good, why mess with them? My husband has a different way of thinking: things are good and will continue to be good, why assume otherwise? We are not built from the same mold. Ultimately, I let his thinking win out and am happy to report that so far, he was right. Things continue to be good. I’m a little more tired, and would very much like to have at least a bit of my core strength return as soon as possible, but I feel content so far in this second postpartum experience. The world is not a vibrating mass of overwhelming joy, nor do I feel anxious or inadequate. I feel at ease, able to recognize and accept the ebbs and flows of life with a new baby. I am able to watch my older son gently kiss the baby’s head while he sweetly says, “Look at this cute little guy” and feel at peace rather than flooded with emotion. I can let the baby shout at the delayed let down of my milk—his frustrated “eh!” sounding so much like a 1940s gangster it makes me laugh—and just shake my head and tell him to chill out. It’s coming. It will be fine. It will all be fine. 

Perhaps my depression will return and I will find myself once again debating the question of whether to live or die. Luckily, I have a well-worn path to follow through and out of that feeling. I know better now how to care for myself through that experience, having done it before. I know how to pick myself up, hold myself gently, how to stay calm. 

When the baby wakes in the night, hungry and angry, I scoop him into my arms and bring him to my breast. His sweet, small body relaxes as he latches on, and I run my hand over his soft head and say, there you go, all better. You’re happy now. 

Why not help me celebrate my birthday by checking out some of my past writing on the topics discussed in this piece!

A (Perhaps Too Honest) Portrait of Living With Depression

The Produce Section Doesn’t Know I’m Postpartum

Another Poem About Depression

How We Fall

Or read my latest published piece, “As Evening Falls,” in Boats Against the Current.

Here is a (frankly depressing) poem I wrote for my baby, the first bit of writing I’ve done outside of these newsletter posts in quite a long while.

And here is a poem for my friend, Charlotte, who was joyful and loving, and so wonderfully sarcastic. I miss her.