Mental health is a topic we’ve covered here ad infinitum, because it’s too common and also too commonly brushed aside or hidden away. Today, Erin writes about her own experience with depression, and the most crushing fear of all: that your own children might not be safe with you. – Jordan
God, my ecosystem is fragile. Too much iced tea, too little sleep, too much soul-crushing writing, too little water, who knows what else, and my circuitry goes haywire. Maybe it’s chemical; the SSRI I swallow nightly can’t keep up with the the atomic rearranging of the alchemy of my brain necessary for me not to feel lousy. Maybe the billions of eukaryotes in my gut are pissed off because I ate nothing but hot dogs and bread for two days. Maybe I just need to sleep more, so I get in bed and lie there, hold my shaking eyelids closed, count the dust particles that drip down from the pinkish black like falling stars.
Feeling bad terrifies me. Last July I was a stay-at-home-Mom with a 5-month-old baby, all flush and paunch stuffed neatly into 6-9M overalls. I had a few bad days, and then a few really bad days, and the badness escalated into a searing, cataclysmic depression before I could reach for the phone to ask for help. I stood over my baby as she lay on her changing table crying. I was frozen still. I looked at her and couldn’t move.
It’s too risky to recount all of my last harrowing depression now, but I did get fixed up. My mom came, an excellent changer of diapers. I saw a therapist, then a psychiatrist, then my midwife. I started taking the tiny white pills. The dense and paralyzing fog of depression lifted, and I could focus again on objects in the distance.
Now when there is a string of bad days, I get scared. How much time do I have before everything falls apart? Will I be alone with my daughter when the walls start to crack and crumble, when the roof splits in two, when the sky rushes in to crush me with bad weather?
There is no feeling worse than this: your own children are not safe with you.
I am well-practiced by now and know what to do. I call my Mom and say, “I’m not well. I may need to drive to your house so I’m not alone.” I text my husband at work and say, “It’s not you, it’s me.” I buy myself a nice salad for lunch, with fried onions and cherry tomatoes. I play Donkey Kong Returns and don’t spend a lick of time at my computer doing that dangerous “introspection,” as my Mom calls it. I turn off NPR when the reporter recounts the bloody details of another airport tragedy. I call my therapist and make an appointment. I make plans for a playdate later, so I’m distracted. I drink water, exercise, lay off the caffeine. I swallow my pill and go to bed early, try to block my nightly cinema, the reel of everything shameful I’ve ever done, from projecting onto my eyelids.
Most of the time, this works, and I feel better.
But, god, is it ever scary to feel so precariously balanced. Every time a toe gets dipped into the black water of a serious depression, I’m reminded of how deeply grateful I am to be alive and mostly okay. Today I can chase my dumpling of a daughter down the hallway, change her with ease, put on a Charlie Parker record while she does a kind of modified twerking (where did she learn this?). Today I will drink more water, take a long walk, make plans. The universe expands again, the stars hang again in their right places, and the little atoms in my brain link the right kind of chains, the ones that settle me down into myself and remind me that today my feelings don’t have to be facts.
Erin Williams is a writer, illustrator, and mother living in New York. She believes that yogurt + goldfish is a balanced meal for toddlers, sweatpants can be fancy, and art is a daily practice. You can find more of her writing at goosecamp.co.
