A Most Depressing Mother’s Day

I feel like I haven’t earned the right to be depressed. I know that’s a ridiculous statement, and I know intellectually that it is a disorder of chemical imbalances in the brain that don’t discriminate, but still, it seems I associate it exclusively with heavy trauma. 

“Big T” trauma, as my therapist called it. I don’t have that. I’ve got the “Lower Case ’t’ in 10 pt. Helvetica Neue” trauma. And for some reason, I can’t quite match up the intellectual and the feeling on this. I’m not stressed about it, it just seemed like a decent topic to put up here on The Morning Gloria for the 5 of you who will read it.

I have friends who have lost parents to suicide, friends who’ve dealt with horrific racism, friends who’ve been abused in all the ways, friends in the military who’ve developed PTSD. Friends who’ve lost children. I know people who know and live Big T trauma. And when they struggle with depression, that makes sense. They’ve earned that.

And here’s me; my life hasn’t been perfect, but there’s little that I can complain about in comparison. I’m white. I live in America. I don’t have an addiction to anything. I haven’t seen war. I haven’t known true poverty. I’m very healthy, my family is healthy, and we have a precious child that we didn’t struggle to conceive. I haven’t struggled with weight, and I don’t have any unique features that stand out and draw unpleasant attention, and though, probably the absolute worst and most shameful thing on the planet for a woman to admit-I’m not unattractive. Well, by society’s standards at least, there are lots of people who find me unattractive, but I have scooted by fitting into some absurd society box of what’s attractive. I ain’t a 10, but if I pile enough makeup on my face and curl my hair, I’m a passable 7, maybe 7.5, and with that has come an undeserved amount of privilege.

Pause now and google Janet Mock’s article on Pretty Privilege and read it, it’s worth it.

And so when I have my moments of feeling the suffocating grip of depression, here’s how it goes:

-Feel anxiety over something

-Think about it for a minute

-Get sad AF

-Realize “Oh yeah, this is my depression.”

-Wallow internally, isolate, cry

-“What on Earth, I have nothing to be sad about”

-Guilt Spiral

-Rational self-talk, which will hopefully lead to some sort of action to get me out of it

-Settle, back to normal

-Depression hangover, exhausted

I can never put my finger on exactly why I have those moments. I’m 3 years past having a baby, and I’m still struggling. 

A little rewind here: I’ve always been anxious. Since forever. I’ve always been a little bit dramatic for a happy bubbly person, but depression is new for me. I had a baby and it reset something in my brain, and now I’m a person who struggles with depression. I had an eating disorder from a very early age and didn’t fully beat it until I was about 24 years old. There’s that whole other guilt that trailed along with me as someone who didn’t genetically struggle with weight, but that was just the way my anxiety manifested itself in the younger years when I didn’t understand myself. 

All that to say, anxiety makes complete sense to me. You don’t have to earn it. It’s just one of those things that feels like some people are born with. I feel like I’ve always been a bit of an anxious chihuahua. I faced it head on when I moved to Nashville where, by sheer will, what makes me feel most proud, I DECIDED I wasn’t a socially anxious person anymore. I decided I would go places alone, not because I was comfortable in doing so, but because I knew that was the only way I’d get anywhere in music. And it helped not knowing anyone. When you live in the same town your whole life, you just are what you are and everyone knows everything about you. But I moved away, feeling thrilled that I got to make myself a new person. And I did. That was therapeutic for me and healed my eating disorder and most of my social anxiety.

Anxiety and depression get lumped together, and I think before I had a baby, I felt like I was somewhat familiar with depression. 

I wasn’t. I had no idea.

So I’ve been on and off with Zoloft or Lexapro, cursing the side effects that come with medicating my depression. I go through cycles with it. I love the not crying all the time. I don’t love the not ever crying. If I had actual time to commit to therapy, I’d be so much more consistent. When I was a stay-at-home mom, therapy was easy to schedule, sign onto a Zoom session during Gloria’s nap. I now have a work schedule that is not conducive to having any kind of consistency in life, so y’know…depression hangs out a little more frequently. If I knew I wouldn’t sob in therapy, I’d do it on my lunch break…but I’d for sure come back to work with mascara running and make all the men uncomfortable.

Anyway, I spent Mother’s Day utterly depressed. And it started with some anxiety and then took off with a jet pack. Blast off-dePRESSED.

You know when you spill something, say a cup of coffee, it always seems like SO much more all over the floor than what was in the cup? You think “how could THAT much coffee have been in that cup, it’s everywhere”. This is how my depression feels. It’s like I carry this little bit of feeling inside me all the time, and then one day it spills and goes EVERYWHERE. And there’s SO MUCH of it. And it’s such a drag to clean it all up.

We were at a baptism for a family member on Mother’s Day. The service hadn’t started, I sat there for maybe 10-15 minutes so anxious that my 3 year old would be disruptive. Some people don’t get stressed about it, but I do. ‘This is why nurseries exist at churches’, I think. I canNOT focus on anything while trying to entertain a 3 year old. I start getting sweaty, and I think ‘oh man, it’s about to go down, I’m not going to make it through this.’ I took Gloria and left. Like put her in the car seat and drove away. Probably the rudest thing, left a family baptism, no words, nothing. I get in the car and lose it. Here’s how this particular spiral went. It was all over the place.

-“My kid is going to be the loud kid in this quiet tiny church”

-Perspiring, highly sensitive, eyes darting all around

-Overwhelmed, cry it out

-Spiral to thinking about how much I miss my family. “I’m here doing everything with Alex’s family while my whole family is so so far away and I have no idea when I’m going to see them.”

-“It’s not Alex’s family’s fault that my family is far away, don’t be a brat, Marion”

-Guilt spiral 

-I’m just plain ugly sad

I go to the house to settle a little bit, Gloria is so sweet. She does a #2 on the potty and I am so proud of her.

Well, I left the baptism with no explanation, so I have to go to this Mother’s Day brunch. 

Show up, cannot talk. 

“Please nobody ask me a question because anything will make me cry right now” I think to myself.

I ate a little food, couldn’t eat dessert.

Y’all know it’s going DOWN if I turn down dessert. I do not turn down dessert. I am very passionate about dessert. 

Hours later, after feeling SO sad all day for no reason, I get to the part of my depression cycle where I have a rational talk with myself and find that I NEED to take action. I decided to take Gloria on a walk around the block. Alex came. We had fun. I came back feeling so much better. If you can get any kind of exercise while feeling depressed, you may not feel 100%, but you are guaranteed to see some level of improvement. This is what I tell myself and it’s true. And then it got to the part where I feel the depression hangover. Just exhausted. 

I spend a lot of time feeling that way. I think my everyday depression just has me ready to go to bed every day as soon as I possibly can.

The building phase of life feels so hard. We’re just pushing forward so much, working our absolute asses off, and doing our best to be as present as possible for Gloria. We don’t know where we’re going to end up, we’re just moving nonstop. If we are paused for a moment, it’s always in some way preparing for the week. I had to pause today to do this because if I go too long without writing something down, it’s not pretty. I already push it too far every single time.

Sometimes I wonder if having another baby will reset my brain again, back to non-depression. My life will be forced to slow down when I have another baby, and I will be met with the new perspective I didn’t get to have with Gloria that “this is SO TEMPORARY.” I’ve learned to soak it all up, immerse myself in every sinking kiss into her biscuit cheeks because they’re here now and will be gone tomorrow. I know this so clearly now; I’ve learned it through Gloria. I long for a slow day baking in baby love. 

And now I think it’s best that I go ahead and stay medicated until life chills out. Yep. Get thee to my Lexapro.