Do NOT call it the “Baby Blues.” I've
swiftly come to hate that wretched phrase, particularly as someone
who's been battling clinical depression for over a decade now. That
phrase just makes it sound like someone's getting a bit mopy and
teary the way you might after watching some hideous Hollywood film
cynically designed to tug at your heartstrings as a way to get you to
empty out the contents of your wallet.
The
closest thing I can liken this emotional turmoil to is a change of
heavy duty medication. Imagine, if you will, the feeling of having
all your mental circuits torn down and rebuilt from the scratch.
Suddenly everything is overwhelming. The logic filters that are in
place to help you sift through each experience and then determine a
suitable emotional reaction are gone, possibly to be refurbished
although I suspect it's more like the old ones have just been tossed
onto the scrap heap while new ones are tailor made to fit into the
void they've left behind.
In the meantime your default reaction is to cry
over every damned thing. I ordered new lampshades for my revamped
hallway and promptly burst into tears having discovered that The
Impending Husband had installed them while AJ and I were napping. I
go downstairs and find that my mother has cooked dinner for us and
burst into tears. I look at my son and realise he's never going to be
this small again and guess what? Yep. More tears.
Worse still is the fear. Or should I say, The
Fear. Those same filters do a fine job stopping your mind from
wandering down the darker avenues of your brain and conjuring up
horrific and oh-so-vivid images of the worst things happening.
Stumbling and dropping your baby on his head. Something falling and
crushing him. A bomb going off while you're out in town and shrapnel
tearing him to ribbons. Cot death. Traffic accident. Aggressive dog
off the leash. Choking. It would be bad enough if it was some
fleeting notion, but it's not. It's horrifically vivid, and it goes
far beyond your child to your other loved ones.
Suddenly I'm seeing The Impending Husband
falling off a ladder or getting into a car accident and never coming
home again. Attacked by a gang of thugs while walking back from the
shops. Stabbed by a mugger. Getting knocked off a train platform onto
the rails at a crowded station. I want to curl up into a ball and
hold him and AJ close and never let them out of my sight again. I see
every mundane thing as a potential threat, enemies on all sides and I
know I'm helpless to stop any of these things from happening; war,
disease, sudden gruesome accidents. The universe is a cold and harsh
place with no reason to it. I'm no stranger to facing up to my fears
and standing my ground and fighting tooth and nail if it comes to it.
Yet this... I wouldn't know where to even begin to try and land the
first punch.
Bad things happen all the time to deserving
and undeserving alike and nobody is more undeserving to my mind than
my two boys and the others in this crazy international network of
people who make up my family – both the ones I have a genetic link
to and love and the ones I love for who they are and being the
friends that they are.
So don't fucking call it the “Baby Blues.”
It cuts far deeper and reaches into a far darker place than that
trite little name lets on.
And yet... it's not all bad. With the tears
comes this feeling of some kind of purge taking place. Old hormones
shifting to make way for the new. The understanding that this is just
part of the process towards becoming more who I was before I got
pregnant. As my Impending Mother-in-Law says, “tears cleanse the
soul.” Could be. Could also be the endorphins surging when they
stop. Either way, you do feel lighter and less weighed down by all
the mental turmoil for a little while at least.
It is the same with The Fear. You pass through
it and then you're on the other side, no longer crippled and wiser
for the experience. You reconstruct a little bit more of those
rational filters. You might not be able to protect your baby from
everything, but you also know that a few preventative steps can go a
long way. The perceived threats around you become a little more
manageable and the protective maternal urges start to take hold and
surge through you. You would meet any threat to your child head on
and kill or be killed to ensure their survival. It is savage, it is
primal, and it's so very right.
This is my brain rewiring itself to deal with
parenthood. It's a vicious and crude process, but I've survived
worse, and billions of other women have managed to work through it as
well. However, I reserve the right to affix any patronizing twunt who
writes it off as “merely the baby blues” to a pair of meathooks,
dangle them from my living room ceiling and use them as a punching
bag to hone that savage protective maternal instinct.
No comments:
Post a Comment