retreat

I miss being a stay at home mom.  I miss it very much.  These days, it feels like I have nothing leftover at the end of the day, energy wise.  I’m short tempered, impatient, and not in very good humor most of the time.  

The past few weeks, I’ve been "checked out" of daily life, mentally and emotionally.  I’m here, physically at least, doing the bare minimum that’s required of me as a wife and mother, but the rest is just sliding by.  I feel burned out. 

Having struggled with chronic depression in my life prior to my pregnancy with Chloe, I’m aware that I’m very susceptible to the triggers, the emotions and chemical/hormonal changes that can easily lead me down into the same dark places I used to live.  I have to guard against that every day, because my tendencies are to wallow in things that are negative and maudlin.  It’s like padding a canoe in the rapids: most of the time the water is calm and serene and clear as glass and I paddle my way through easily, but when I hit choppy waters it becomes easy to want to throw the paddle in and let the rapids take me under because it’s just so much hard work to stay afloat. 

My current troubles started several weeks ago with a particularly vicious week of PMS.  I was irritable, closed off, annoyed, and just generally a bitch to be around.  I did not want human company, even that of my children (and it really pains me to write that).  I’d hoped that once my hormones straightened back out with the cessation of my period, I would be right as rain again, but I think my daily stress and worry is adding to the mix. 

Now, I find myself retreating into fiction, into the lives of fake people, because I don’t want to have much to do with what’s going on in my own life.  I don’t want to think, or to plan, because I find that I’m frustrated with situations that I cannot change.  Aaron’s still out of work, Chloe’s behavior has gotten beastly lately because I’m not home to be the voice of reason when it comes to guidance and discipline, and I’m just tapped out. 

I’m such a self-sufficient person.  Having children changed that aspect of me somewhat, but I will always be the kind of person who needs a lot of physical and emotional space.  I need to spend a lot of time in my own head to feel balanced, and I haven’t felt balanced in a long time.  I work hard – harder, lately, because I’ve been given more responsibility – and then come home to Benjamin  who is still completely attached to me in every way, Chloe who is jealous that Ben still gets so much of me to himself, and Aaron who is having his own difficulties trying to be the stay at home dad.  At the end of the day, I’ve got nothing left for myself and I feel that strain painfully. 

All those years of struggling with depression has left me with the ability to recognize the symptoms in myself, which is a blessing.  I’m trying to change what I can, which isn’t much, but hopefully will still add to the balance of the scales.  I’m taking up a yoga class on Tuesdays, followed by grocery shopping by myself.  And I’m trying to write again.  I debate with myself about the writing, because I can get so drawn into a universe that it can be detrimental to my participation in the world around me, but it’s one of the things that feel healing to me right now, so I plan to follow my gut and hope that’s the case.  If it starts to become another avoidance mechanism, I’ll have to stop. 

It’s not always easy for me to "snap out of it" when I have a spell like this, but as long as I’m aware of where I am mentally, then I can constantly be vigilant that I’m not falling too deep down the rabbit hole, and that’s more than I could say for myself five years ago.