Breaking Through

I finally decided I'm crazy. After another couple of breakdowns and good conversations with a couple friends and John, I realized that things are just not right. I am not myself. At all. I kept thinking it would get better. I kept thinking, "It's just a bad day." But it's been ten months since Harper was born (plus the pregnancy-induced craziness before that) and not that much has changed. It really should be better by now and in some ways it feels worse.

The good news is that I have a plan of action. But I realized that I often don't want to face a problem, or talk about it until I have a solution, so today I'm just going to talk about the problem. For now I want to describe what crazy feels like for me. Because perhaps someone else out there is going crazy too and doesn't know it. To me, crazy feels like this:

There's a feeling of pressure building up where I think that I can't possibly handle one more thing. Little, seemingly innocuous things send me either into rage or a frenetic state of indecision, where I jump from one thing to the next and never finish anything and can't focus on anything. My mind literally can't focus on something like making lunch because I can FEEL that runway of dirt and leaves and footprints trailing from the front door. I know the dirt can wait, but I FEEL it will destroy me if I don't handle it immediately. When it's really bad, I just cry. And cry. And cry. (To which Z says: "Mama, why you cryin' all time?")
Some days I wake up feeling already defeated and exhausted. I dread getting out of bed or hearing the kids wake up. At many points during the day I calculate how many hours until the kids are in bed, or until I'm in bed. I wonder what I'm going to do with the chasm of time between now and then. I wish that someone would come over and play with the kids so I could leave. I wonder how many more times I will have to play "gardener" with Z and sometimes I remember when I used to be able to have fun with him when doing it. I think up "errands" to go on to get out of the house and to have the kids strapped into car seats for even just the ten-minute drive so I don't have to interact with them.
Other times, it feels like there is a thick curtain between me and what is going on. I am in the moment but not of it. I watch the kids play but am distracted by the shadows and anxiety in my head. Even when I'm doing something I love, like hanging out with friends or spending time out alone, I can't quite enjoy it. The gloomy cloud has followed me and I find reasons to be annoyed or discontent with what should bring me joy.
All the time I think that I should be able to snap out of it. A quiet moment of prayer, a refocusing on what is important, wise words from a friend repeating through my mind... these should help me turn my day around. Sometimes they help a little, but often they don't. I blame myself for my failure, my bad attitude, my sin. I'm ashamed.

And then I went to see movie and laughed out loud several times. It felt like something my cheek muscles hadn't done in a long time. And then I talked to a friend* who reflected back to me what she had seen and heard for months. And she reflected back to me the person I usually am- the person she has known a long time. And I remember that I actually usually enjoy my friends, my kids, my husband. I usually have a sense of humor. I usually can get my way to a solution to most problems pretty quickly. And I realize that I am very, very tired of feeling like this.


I'm sure some of what I described are very normal mother-of-small-children feelings. But there's a line there somewhere (and perhaps it's in a different spot for each of us) and there's a point where you just have to listen to yourself and others and realize things just don't feel right. I crossed the line, folks. But I'm making changes and getting help and I'm going to break back through again.

* P.S. Thanks, M. Friend is not a big enough word to describe you.