Sharing My Load: Part One

This might be the hardest post to hit send on. I haven’t even typed the words that I wrote back in 1998, but just re-reading them hurts. I want to share this though. I’m probably opening up a door that should be left alone, but if it helps just one person, then me hitting the wall will make it worth it.

Mom & Kathy: You might not want to read this. It’s at the core of me at the worst time in my life and I have come back from there and I am better person now, but it still hurts and you were there and this hurt you too…these are probably memories of a time you don’t want to relive.

July 31, 1998

Today was just another day. I went to the bank and took some money out to pay the house payment from last month and this month, well, July that is.

I went to the doctor last week. I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. I guess I had it coming having two children back to back.
I knew from the beginning that something was wrong, but thought light of it. Now I am so deep I don’t feel an escape. Well, I do, but it is unacceptable. I feel like there is nothing left of me. I feel…no I don’t feel anything…I sense things.
I sense things slipping through my fingers and I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I have no pride, no feelings, no love, no hate…i’m so indifferent.

My eyes are more open to things I have never ever thought of before, such as suicide. I never could understand how someone who was depressed could kill themselves, I would ask; “Didn’t they think about the people they would leave behind? Didn’t they care?” I now understand that with depression that you’re only allowed one emotion at a time and if your drawn so far into it, your only thought is escape and remorse has no place.

I often wonder how long I can last. I don’t know how long I can go on without ‘feeling’ things, seeing the future for what it might be and not caring enough to do something about it, to save what I have.

I heard this song on the radio and the line in it said, “You bleed just to know you’re alive.” I feel like that, like if I could just FEEL something that I could snap back.
I laugh and cry, but it’s on such a weird level. I feel more anger & hurt, but mostly guilt and anger. The anger stems from anything that happens that ‘just isn’t fair’ and the guilt is because before I could have handled it, but now I just don’t care. I want to hide. The overwhelming need to hide scares me. I want to run, tuck myself in a ball and …die.
I’m pretty sure that is it.

Everyday is a struggle. It’s amazing by the end of the day that I haven’t snapped. I wake up every morning and I think to myself, “Today is the day I won’t make it”…but I do and that fact alone pisses me off.
God I am so far gone.

I can see all this bad stuff happening and I can’t do anything to stop it.
I see Dan and I slipping further and further apart. I know he can’t take much more of me neglecting “us”, but I can’t even think about that because I don’t want to give him what isn’t really there. Like when we talk, I want to say things, but my mouth won’t open. I just think them in my head and he just gets this blank stare. He has now just stopped talking to me. When I do talk I feel like I am a zombie who is just talking because I know he needs to hear my voice.