Drowning in Self

My life and struggles

[drowninginself]

Hello darkness, my old friend

When I was in my first semester in college, I became depressed.  Clinically depressed, mind you.  Not the “depressed” that every teenager moans they feel when they are sad.  It was an all-consuming succubus that sapped my energy, gluing me to the bed and making me stare off into space for hours on end, trapped in my own mind.  It caused my eyes to dart quickly across pages of books, so that reading became almost impossible.  And it was the ever-present feeling of the weight of a wet blanket draped over me like a child with a bedsheet pretending to be a ghost on Halloween. It was a black hole, and I was falling into it, not wanting to be rescued.

I recognized the signs, and although staying in my warm cocoon of self-pity was comforting, I got help.  I went to therapy.  I took the medication they prescribed.  And I tried. I made changes to my life.  I made changes to my habits – exercise, forcing myself to do things that I once found enjoyable, etc.  It wasn’t until a year after my boyfriend left me – a year spent in vain, losing weight and trying to be “fun”, in effort to try to win him back – when I moved on with my life that I finally pulled away from the clutches of the darkness.  

Looking back, I see evidence that I might have had underlying depression years before it finally overtook me.  I once read that depression is contagious.  After having depression, I understand how that it possible.  You don’t want to be helped, and when people try to help you – and they do – they get pulled in as well.  It’s like that feeling after you take a short nap, and you wake up wanting to sleep a little longer.  And then, after sleeping a little longer, you wake up and want just a little longer, over and over and over.

I’m convinced that my depression started when I was living with my mother, right after my father left us.  That’s a big change for a kid.  But then there’s the little things that wear you down.  Like when your mother sends you to the corner store almost every day to buy each of you a pint of ice cream, and she gives you rolls of pennies to pay for it.  Then you sit there with her and eat your pints of ice cream in one sitting.  And your father feels so guilty for leaving that he buys you a banana split from the ice cream place across the street from his new apartment every Sunday that you visit.  And you watch your school pictures over the next few years go from a skinny little girl that’s active and open, to an overweight hulk with 3 chins that is teased by the other kids for being overweight so she stays indoors all the time and closes herself off.  

When I was in 6th grade, and at my biggest, my mother decided that it would be a good idea to have a mother/daughter portrait taken.  To get me to smile a genuine smile, and not the robotic “cheese” smile of an adolescent forced into a picture-taking session, the cameraman told me to say “boys”.  I laughed – and inadvertently smiled – because it was absurd.  But it also embarrassed the shit out of me. Even now, when I think back to that photo session, I get embarrassed.  I eventually lost the weight – and destroyed almost every photographic shred of evidence of myself being that heavy, as I could not stand to see myself look like that – but the insecurities I developed during that time stayed with me, always.    

It also didn’t help that kids at school were mean to me – I talking really, really mean. One day when I was walking back to my classroom, alone.  I don’t remember where I had been coming from, or exactly what grade I was in – I’m thinking either 5th or 6th.  I was walking down the deserted hall when two older boys, whom I didn’t know, were walking behind me.  In order to get to the upper grade classrooms - including my own - you needed to walk up a flight of stairs.  The boys were probably coming from drum practice, since they had drumsticks with them. As I walked up the stairs, and they behind me, one of them stuck a drumstick between my thighs and laughed with his friend as it stayed suspended there, wagging back and forth as my thighs rubbed together as I climbed the stairs.  I was so embarrassed and hurt that I didn’t even turn around.  I just stopped and spread my legs, allowing the drumstick to fall.  Then I continued on my way, and never spoke of it to anyone.          

[drowninginself]

Waiting for the Reaping

Right now I am watching The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu.  It’s about a dystopian society in which the few women that are able to still reproduce are forced to bare the children of rich, powerful men because their wives cannot and the population is dwindling.  They live in a rigid society, governed by religious zealots.  I find myself drawn to dystopian society movies and television shows. I believe that is because I’m dissatisfied with the society we live in.  I want the world to go back to a simpler way of life – the way life was long before I was born – where the expectations put on women were no more than to cook and clean and make babies.  Nowadays we’re expected to be men – or even more than men.  We have to constantly fight for our position in this world, simply because society has moved so far away from our old position that it is now unobtainable to most.  

The dystopian societies portrayed on television and in the movies are meant to be the worst society can become…however, in each story the dystopian society is another person’s utopia – after all, that’s how the dystopian society came to be.  And while I would never wish to live in the dystopian society of The Handmaid’s Tale, I do find myself looking longingly at the characters in The Walking Dead.  Let me say that never in a million years would I wish my loved ones in a world where we had to run for our lives from zombies trying to kill us, but I do love the freedom the characters have.  They are living their lives gathering resources: food, water, clothing, shelter – doing meaningful things.  We live our lives doing tasks for money, which in turn we use to purchase resources - I don’t find that fulfilling.  I find more joy in making my own bread than I do with making a spreadsheet.  The best part of my life is when I’m cooking for my family, or cleaning my house.  It’s meaningful.  

However, society as a whole will never go back to the simple way of life of the 1700’s which consisted of growing your own food, cutting your own wood for winter, being self-reliable – this is viewed as a step back. The only way for this to happen is for some cataclysmic event to take place.  Something that wipes out the majority of the people, and forces us back to the old ways of doing things simply out of necessity – a plague, a war, a reaping.  I’m personally rooting for the reaping.  It’s the quickest, least violent way to get rid of a large amount of people quickly – and I’m guaranteed to be left on Earth since I’m an asshole.                

[drowninginself]

The Dragon Warrior Method

During my early teen years – but really during my whole life – I was heavily into video games.  My mother, being raised in the era before the video game craze, was against video games, and therefore did not buy me many – if any.  She did, however, buy me a subscription to Nintendo Power, the most awesome video game magazine of all time.  When it was time to renew my Nintendo Power, my mother – amazingly - took advantage of a deal they were running.  If you renewed the magazine for 3 years, you got a free game – Dragon Warrior III, for the NES.  I never asked for Dragon Warrior III, nor was I aware of the existence of any of the Dragon Warrior games, however, my mother recognized a good deal when she saw one, renewed for the 3 years and I got my free copy of Dragon Warrior III.  

Dragon Warrior III was a RPG – role playing game.  The objective was to kill the bad guy after walking around, talking to people and gaining experience points by killing lesser creatures.  It came with a huge fold out map showing where you needed to go and what experience level the adversaries you would face in each area had.  I loved this game.  I played the game all the time.  

Finally the time came when I would have to travel to the land where the boss of the game lived, and ultimately kill him.  I checked my fold out map to see what level the boss was and what level they recommended I be at before facing him.  I can’t remember exactly what his level number was, but for the sake of argument let’s say his level was 25 and they recommended that you be at least at level 20 before attempting to overtake him.  At the time, I was over the minimum required level to face the boss.  However, being the cautious person that I am, I decided that it would be a good idea to level up a bit more before attempting the take down – after all, I worked hard to get where I was and didn’t want to die and lose it all.  I roamed the forest area of the game, killing foes for small points.  I did this over and over and over until I had reached an experience level of 30.  Now I was ready.  I had an extra edge of 5 experience levels over this guy and my confidence was up. I made my way to the middle of the boss’ domain and faced him in what was to be Dragon Warrior III’s ultimate battle of good vs. evil.  I hit the beast 2 times and he died.  That was it. The game was over in the most Mike Tyson vs. Marvis Frazier way possible.  I overly prepared for the fight and had been too strong, and in doing so was left without the sense of accomplishment that usually comes with beating a video game to which you devoted countless hours.                  

Fast forward to my adulthood.  As I looked back on my Dragon Warrior III experience, I realized that this was my approach to obstacles in life.  I overly prepare in order to not lose.  Could I win without overly preparing?  Possibly.  But why would I want to risk losing?  

[drowninginself]

The Curse of L.A. Gear

My mother racked up huge credit card debt in order to raise me.  I, being sensitive to our monetary situation, tried to make clothing choices that were more budget friendly – like the $8 boy’s sneakers from Bradlees that I wore during grade school, and chose over and over again when buying sneakers, despite the fact that one of my friends teased me about them by calling them Bobo’s – which was a derogatory term for generic sneakers.  Of course, I was a kid.  And kids are not known for their willpower.  So, when L.A. Gear sneakers appeared on the scene with fancy double laces, fake jewels, a bow at the back and everything girly in all their high-top glory…I couldn’t resist.  I asked for them.  I asked my mother for a pair of $75 sneakers when a pair of good sneakers didn’t cost anywhere near $75.  But that’s not the fucked up part.  The fucked up part is that she said yes.  “Are you sure?” I asked, again and again.  And again, she said yes.  

They were glorious!  Black and white with diamond-y jewels on the sides and decorative stitching around them, and the double laces – my god, how I loved the double laces – they were better than I imagined.  At a time in my life when I felt – and was – fat and frumpy, those shoes made me feel cool. But they came with a cost greater than the $75 my mother scraped together to buy them.  They cost my conscience a heavy blow.  To this day, I’m still racked with guilt over asking for those shoes.  I knew I shouldn’t have asked at the time, but I did anyway, and I feel that I forced my mother into an extravagant purchase.  I never asked her for expensive sneakers again.              

[drowninginself]

The Great Motivator

When I was about 5 or 6, my father had an affair.  He ended up choosing the other woman over my mother and me.  And so, my parents separated.  My mother and I continued to live in the duplex we rented, while my father moved in with his girlfriend in the next town over.  My mother was a secretary at the time, and not making much money.  She didn’t ask much – or get much – from my father, and so money was tight.  She did her best to make ends meet, but I still grew up hearing my mother cry about lack of money.  In all actuality, I think that was the great motivator for me to choose a career that would yield me enough money to stand on my own without a man – and my father’s affair was the great motivator for me to be ready to do so.

[drowninginself]

Know Your Roots...

There could not be two people from more different backgrounds than my parents.  My father was the first born of a white, non-practicing Protestant middle class family from Quincy that moved to a house they had built that sat upon a good amount of land for the 5 children they would eventually have – 4 boys and 1 girl - to run around without being on top of each other.  It was only a 3 bedroom house, however the basement was dry and livable and very large. When the younger siblings came along, the eldest children – now in their teens – were moved downstairs to rooms in the basement, so there was never overcrowding.  His parents – my grandparents – were a happily married couple, consisting of an accountant and a former secretary turned housewife.  They were everything that embodied the 1950’s and the family values of that era.  Both of my paternal grandparent’s families had been in America for generations.

My mother was the fourth born of a strict Catholic household, consisting of 8 siblings – 4 brothers and 4 sisters.  They grew up in East Cambridge in a house with a very small backyard and not enough bedrooms to accommodate 8 children – bed-sharing, a la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the norm.  Her parents were married, although ended up divorcing a few years after I was born and was probably due to my grandfather’s infidelity – to be fair, I’m not clear on whether it was actual infidelity or just a wandering eye, but regardless they divorced and he remarried within a few years, whereas she never did.  My material grandfather was a fry cook.  My maternal grandmother was a cleaner for offices in Boston.  Needless to say, my mother grew up poor – like Government cheese poor.  Both of them were first generation Americans.        

[drowninginself]

Vampires and 1,800 seconds...

With Sarah off to college, and Jeremy’s night shifts, I find myself completely alone with Lily three nights a week, and it scares the shit out of me.  I’ve always had high anxiety, but for some reason spending four hours alone with Lily doing exactly what I would be doing if another adult was with me seems to up my anxiety to record heights.  Maybe it’s because I know I don’t have the safety net of being able to say “watch Lil for a minute while I _______ real quick” – with “______” being anything from “take a shit in peace” to “clean the puke she just unleashed all over her bed”.  I’ve had some really horrible experiences with Lily while Jeremy was at work – and also while he was at home – but I usually had Sarah there to back me up when needed.  Sarah tried to bow out from pitching in with family duties as much as possible by sticking to her bedroom – a strategy I didn’t always let her get away with -  but she could be counted on to help when the emergency arose.  Then again, the near panic attack level of anxiety I feel on my way home from work on nights I’m alone with Lil might stem from knowing that it’s all me.  Lily is an energy vampire.  Actually, I have a theory that all kids are energy vampires – that’s why you always hear people asking “where do they get all their energy”, because it’s from you!  They are sucking it right out of you!  When Lily’s out with my mother, and she comes home, I can literally feel my energy drop the moment that tiny juggernaut walks in the door.  So knowing that I’m the only power source for this mini-nosferatu is terrifying.  I feel guilty because instead of enjoying these precious moments of her early years, I’m eagerly counting the minutes until her bedtime when I can tuck her in, close the door and spend 30 glorious minutes of mindlessness, vegging out in front of Big Bang reruns and definitely not having to respond to anyone for one thousand eight hundred seconds.  

[drowninginself]

My Fucked Up Past...

Sarah was raised half at my house and half at her fathers’ parents’ house.  Because of this, I don’t think she ever felt like she was a resident of my house, but rather a guest.  This is evidenced by Sarah always asking if she could have a drink when she was growing up, instead of just opening the fridge and getting it.  At 3 years old, Lily has already started opening the fridge – without me telling her to.  This is saying to me that Lily feels she owns the fridge and has a right to open it, while Sarah didn’t feel the same way.  

           I got together with Sarah’s father after a breakup with my high school boyfriend.  We had been together for 4 years, taken each other’s virginity, and planned to get married at some point – at least, until he decided not to.  I had just quit college after a year and a half, my childhood pet died, I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life and I was diagnosed with clinical depression when he chose to bow out.  He tried to ghost me.  I had no idea what was happening.  He had been living with me at my mother’s house for the past year when all of a sudden he didn’t come home.  I didn’t know if something had happened to him, and with everything else going on in my life, I failed to recognize the signs that he was unhappy in the relationship.  He was my best friend.  The person I would turn to when things were too much for me – and he wasn’t there anymore. It was devastating.    

           He moved into an apartment down the road with a new buddy of his.  We kept in touch for the next year, while I frantically dieted and exercised and tried to entice him to come back.  I lost 40lbs. We occasionally slept together, which I took as a good sign that he would eventually realize that he missed me and we should get back together.  But we didn’t.  He kept me as a fuck-buddy, and when I’d had enough, I decided to find someone else. That’s when I found Sarah’s father…online…in a chatroom.  That probably should have been my first red flag, but seeing as how my self-esteem was so low, and how he complimented me up and down about my appearance – something I hadn’t felt good about in a long time – I ignored the bells and sirens going off in my head and started seeing him.  He was okay looking.  Not hideous, but not what I would call attractive.  I had convinced myself that I wasn’t meant to have a relationship with someone I was insanely attracted to, and that a quiet, domestic life taking care of a small family was an honorable, worthwhile life that I could lead.  The whole thought now feels very Sarah Plain and Tall.

           We rushed in.  I got pregnant and had Sarah.  Over the pregnancy, he showed his true colors.  He was looking for a woman to wait on him hand and foot, then spread her legs whenever the fancy struck him, which was often.  He was older than me, and came from a wealthy home.  And he tried to make me feel inferior because of it. At that point, I didn’t have a college degree.  He had two of them.  I came from the poor section of Cambridge, MA and a broken, lower middle-class home. He came from Norway, with both parents still married to each other, living in a big house they owned in Weston, MA and his father owning his own successful software company.  It was difficult not to feel like the “white trash” that he often referred to me as.  

           After I had had enough of his psychological abuse – and there were many, many instances of this abuse – I took Sarah, around 2.5 years old at the time – and moved into my mother’s house.  What made the situation worse is that his mother had been Sarah’s daytime care provider while we were at work.  We continued with that arrangement, but it was extremely uncomfortable when I had to drop off and pick up Sarah, sometimes having to deal with her abusive remarks.  Why did I take all this bullshit?  I was young and poor and while I couldn’t afford childcare on my own, I made too much money for public assistance.  

[drowninginself]

My Life So Far...

I’m 40.  I made it to 40?  Is that how I should say it?  Anyway, I turned 40 in April, but I still think like I’m 20 and I look like I’m somewhere in my early 30’s – it would be mid 20’s if I didn’t have so much weight on me. I have 2 daughters: Sarah and Lily. Sarah is 18, just graduated high school and is attending college nearby.  Lily is 3, in preschool 2 days a week and up my ass the rest of the time.  I’ve been married to my husband, Jeremy, for 13 years this coming October.  He works 3 nights a week and all day Sunday.  Jeremy watches Lily all day for 3 days a week.  I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it is.  Lily is much.  So much. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lily. She is simply the cutest little girl, and she says the funniest things and I love spending time with her – you know, until I have to actually get something done, like cook or clean or sit down for a fucking minute without having to constantly interact with her.  And my god is she strong willed.  It’s like someone took all the strong will out of my personality, boiled it down to a concentrated strength, and sculpted a small girl out of it.  She won’t sit still, she won’t play by herself, she won’t let you brush her hair, or put it in a pony, and she won’t eat…anything really.  When she was a baby, I fed her everything.  I wanted her to taste all the foods so she would grow up eating everything.  Boy, did that not go as planned.  Foods that Lily loved as a baby – like oatmeal and carrots – will not cross her lips as a preschooler.  I honestly think she only eats about 20 foods, and that half of them are crap like cupcakes and ice cream.  As the mother of Lily, I feel like a failure.  Although I am able to get her to go to bed every night at the same time, consistently – and without me waiting for her to pass out before I leave the room.  I’m very proud of that little win.  The fact that Lily is stuck to me like glue is one of the reasons my house looks like a pit.  It’s dirty actually.  There’s dust and cat hair everywhere.  If I clean my bathrooms once every other month, that’s more than I normally do. There are toys all over the place. When Lily was first born, she was difficult.  She was colicky every night from 9pm to midnight.  And there I was, with her, in my bedroom, trying to get her to be quiet so that Sarah could get some rest for school in the morning.  Jeremy was working 4 nights a week at that time, and I felt very alone.  She would nurse for 3 hours straight.  I later read that that meant she was just using me as a pacifier.  I felt less upset about giving up breast feeding after 2 weeks after reading that.  Lily’s infancy was a very difficult time for me.  Since Jeremy worked most nights, and would have Lily during the day, I would take the night shift – yes, the whole thing, just me – and then I would get up at 4:30am to get ready and drive an hour to work, and an hour home, to have my husband leave me so that he could go to work.  It was very isolating.  I live at least an hour from any of my family, so there was no chance of any of them dropping in to see me/help me.  My mother did what she could, but she works too and couldn’t be there all the time.  I had crazy thoughts during this time.  I would try to think of a way to get rid of Lily – by means of adoption, not hurting her in any way – while still being able to keep my life as it was, without Jeremy divorcing me or my family shunning me.  I never told anyone about those thoughts.  I had the same sort of thoughts after I adopted our second cat, Mouse. Mouse and our first cat, Tiger, were not getting along, and I was to the breaking point where I thought I had to get rid of Mouse.  Of course, getting rid of Mouse and going on with my life would have been a lot easier than getting rid of Lily and doing the same.  I made it through those crazy thoughts, and couldn’t imagine my life without Lily.  I honestly don’t remember what it’s like not to have her.  During some of the difficult times in the beginning of her life, I would get through by reminding myself that this wasn’t forever.  The way things were would eventually change.  I just had to get through those few months, and then things would change – and they did.  Some things would get easier, and some things would get harder.  And again, I would remind myself that this wasn’t forever - around and around and around we go.  Now here we are, present day, and my house is a mess, which depresses me.  My weight is the same as after I delivered Lily, which depresses me.  And I don’t get to see my husband nearly as much as I want – because he works 3 nights and 1 full weekend day a week - which – you guessed it - depresses me.  I’m saying a lot about Lily and nothing about Sarah.  This is because Lily dominates everything, and yes, unfortunately Sarah gets put on the back burner – partly because Lily is all-consuming, and partly because Sarah is older and should be able to take care of herself.  To understand Sarah, you have to know that she is overly sensitive, and is incapable of judging people’s emotions – seriously, I think she has some kind of mental condition or something where she literally cannot judge emotions; think Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory. Because of this, she will fly off the handle if you say “what?” when you didn’t hear what she said, or say you are yelling at her when you say something she doesn’t want to hear – even though your level of volume is normal, and you are talking to her in a calm and not harsh manner.  At times I think she’s a fucking whackadoodle.  I’m sure the problem is that she has a lot of emotional problems that need to be resolved.  I know a lot of them stem from her father and his parents, and I’m sure some of them come from me as well, and my mother.  Everyone is fucked up on some level from how they were raised.