Once a month I get hit with it. Right before my period. It’s not so obvious as getting whacked in the gut with a bat, but more like a thick black fog rolling over me that I don’t even notice until I’m plunged in the darkness and it’s too late.
I hate the feeling of dread that comes with depression. The feeling like you know you’re blessed and everything is good and you have SO MUCH except you can’t reach out and touch it. It’s right there in front of you but somehow your line to it was disconnected and no matter what you do you can’t get the line hooked back up.
I hate that feeling so much. Usually by the time I recognize what’s going on I realize it’s related to my period and it will be over in a day or two. I know it’s only temporary and I’m lucky. It reminds me of when I’ve had depression full bore, like last fall, for weeks on end.
When those ugly days hit me last month I wanted to write about them except I couldn’t get up the energy or passion to do that. Then I saw this blog post yesterday from Heather Armstrong at Dooce and I thought she did all the explaining necessary to describe what depression is like:
We don’t want to get out of bed, not because we’re lazy but because we’re paralyzed. Our limbs and sometimes our lungs are rendered useless by electric pangs of hopelessness.
We do not want to feel this way, and I can assure you that if given the choice we’d much rather jump out of bed with a gymnastic lilt and skip throughout our day. We’d love to greet obstacles as exciting challenges and not as sinkholes, gaping voids in the ground beneath our feet that reach up and swallow us whole. We’d give anything not to be consumed with dread.
If you’re feeling that way right now, I know what it’s like. Many of the women who are part of Postpartum Progress know exactly what it’s like. We know you can’t make it better by force of will – you can’t engineer a spectacular way out of it with some feat of innovation, or athletic prowess or super-powered prayer. It takes help from people who know how to help you plus a generous helping of time.
Hang in there mamas.
Photo credit: © Roman Dekan – Fotolia.com
That feeling hits me all to often. I just wrote about it too. It’s rough
I spent my first 8 months post-partum like this. Every day worse than the one before, not able to enjoy my new baby, my older kids, my husband, my business or anything else in my life. It was one of the most horrific things I’ve lived through and it truly isn’t something you can help yourself out of, no matter how much you long for it or wish for it.
Thanks for sharing that Jodi!
I really needed to read this, especially today. Thank you, I am right in the middle of this fog and needed to know (again) it’s not just me.
It’s definitely NOT just you, Angela. Hugs.
that JUST happened to me with my last period! Several days of “my life is great, WHY am I so UNHAPPY?! Why can’t I enjoy it?! Do I need meds? Do I need therapy? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???” Oh. My period. Duh. Within a couple of days I was enjoying life again. But that little detour reminded me so much of when I had PPD. Hormones are powerful little buggers. Thanks for sharing.
Yep. SUCKS SO MUCH.
I never had this kind of pre-period dark-as-night-mood prior to PPD. I sure do now. I am finally over the hump of the PPD and “Baby” just turned 2 years old. Is this a side-effect of a body/mind forever altered, scarred if you will, by PPD? I am a beast, feeling like I’m heading back into “The Hole” again 2 days before my period. Scary every month. Glad I’m not the only one, though not glad we have this horrible reminder of what that awful time was like.
Funny that I saw this today, as I struggled to will myself out of bed. I feel like all the progress I have made in the past 8 monthshas disappeared after our baby boy was still born a month ago. I know I will get better, but right now I feel hopeless. It helps to know I’m not alone, thank you for all your hard work Katherine.
I know how much the hopelessness sucks, Sarah. Please hold on tight and don’t give up.
I’ve been in this now off and on (actually, worse and not as a bad–I wish “off”!) since giving birth two years ago. A lot of other things have happened since then, too, including an overseas move (repatriating) and months of no income/looking for work. My husband hasn’t been able to get a job so I’ve been doing my own projects, things I love and am passionate about, but as I try to write and work on things, I find that I just don’t feel anything. I’m an incredibly passionate, emotional, feeling person, so it’s bizarre to me to try and do the things I know I love/am passionate about and not feel anything. Other than extreme exhaustion and sadness now and then.
It’s hard to stay motivated, in that sense, because I feel like I can’t seem to tap into the motivation I know is there, somewhere. I keep trying to plug away at things (without forcing myself to do more than I can handle) in hope that my passion will come back. And part of me wonders if maybe just doing this work will eventually pull me out and bring that passion and joy back to the surface? It may not happen that way at all, but I’m trying to be hopeful. Because this depression is depressing.