A Hard Look Within, Part Ten

(Editor’s note: This post may seem disjointed and skip around a lot. That is the reality of my day-to-day existence most times. I hope this all makes some sort of sense at the end….)

Sixteen years this September it will be, since my son‘s presence in my life forever changed the paths I had known.  It has been thirteen years since the second most changing spiritual experiences of my life.   Yet in my mind it is still ringing as “Ten years ago…” Because it has taken me thirteen years to realize what those ten years were and it was three years prior to that, with the birth of Carter and the first three years of his life, that the journey of not only self discovery but divine discovery began.

This is the part I fear writing the most because what I wish to write about encompasses a touchy subject that I have a lot of misgivings about.  I am terrified.  That there could be consequences for writing it, that maybe, in light of some of the other shit I have read out there…and I mean shit,  that an idea could be formed about me that isn‘t who I am at all.  But as I have learned from a very brave woman named Crystal at http://www.mcknob.com, sometimes you have to say ‘fuck it’ and expose your tender underbelly all because someone out there somewhere may gain a bit of strength from the wisdom of your own mistakes and be helped by it.

And that by standing up and taking some hits you will be much stronger for it.

Of all the times in recent history this is the time the world needs anchors.  Chain breakers.  Warriors.  People who have learned to face their fears and lay them to rest so that we can build a stronger generation in the children we have nurtured at our breasts and knees.  This, I feel,  is sacred work.

My post-partum depression with Carter never seemed to end.  My days were bleak and held nothing new in them.  I didn’t realize what a miracle I had right before me, squalling, pooping, spitting up, depending, and relying on me. I have a very dear friend who just told me the other night that I am too hard on myself.  She says I am a good Mom.  I sure as hell hope so.  I struggle every day with the voices that try to tell me otherwise.  The voices I grew up with.  The voices that raised me.  The voices that were raised.

Back then I didn’t know how to bond with my baby.  He squalled.  I wasn’t sure he was actually human.  It felt like he was too loud to be a human. Too helpless.  I couldn’t understand how to feel about him.  He was cute.  I liked it when he slept.  He slept through the night by two months old.  Yet my heart didn’t know what to do with this scary little helpless creature.  I just didn’t fucking get it.

The situation with Cain left the always-present anger roiling constantly just under the surface.  Heating up like a pustule waiting to burst.  Only sometimes instead of bursting outward it would implode and that rage would lash back into me, whipping those barbs deep within my own self worth.

A few old friends stopped by.  It was good to see the company.  Big people.  With teeth.  Who could talk.  Who brought marijuana with them.

The me that is right now looks back on the me that was back then and I don’t know weather to love or hate her.  She needed slapped once or twice I think, likely more.  I wonder what the fuck I was thinking?

Then I remember how making those decisions, while some of them were so negative and destructive, some of the ones that would be judged, at first glance, to have the potential for the most destruction ended up being my saving grace.

I have never, when I have smoked marijuana been one who would smoke as much as I could just to see how wasted I could get.  That herb alters my perceptions of reality and I found out early on that if I went ahead and smoked as much as I could I had the potential to not only make myself physically very ill, but my own brain coming up with it’s ‘stoner ideas’ could pretty much send me ‘round the bend.  Also, I found,  if I used it on a daily basis within a month or two I reached burn out, turned into Bitchzilla and decided that shit is just not worth using anymore.  Well, at least until the next time I really felt the need to change my view of life, no matter how temporarily.

My friend left me a marijuana bud half the size of my thumb.  This was like a goldmine to me.   It would last me for five months. Regular smokers would have had it two days.

I realize marijuana is a drug and I do not condone it‘s use in an addictive way.  I also know from personal experience how easy it is to abuse in this manner. Sometimes, and for some, the risks outweigh the benefits.

Yet if it wasn’t for what this plant can do that is good, I would not have learned to bond with my baby, the depression would have deepened in stead of lessening, however temporarily and I believe I could have harmed myself or possibly my baby.

For the first time, I learned to see my baby as my son.  Seeing him as my son made him real to me.  He was a person now, not just a loud little pooping thing.  He was about five months old by this time.  Starting to actually turn from helpless baby to inquisitive infant.  He always had been inquisitive, but before I took up the once a week (sometimes two at first) ritual of smoking a couple puffs, I couldn’t see that.  Somehow that stuff helped me open and eye inside my heart and head that let me see him as a person.

I began to realize the hand and eye gestures meant something, they weren’t mindless flails.  There was purpose behind the intent.  I had not been able to get that those sounds he was making were attempts at engagement and communication.  I found out that I could make him laugh because I found out he liked it when I played with him.  Even then I couldn’t have told you or even really comprehended him  wanting to engage my attention.  Experience, growth and maturity helped light that bulb.

Yet to hear him giggle…that innocent, honest baby giggle made me want to do things to make him happier.  We played games.  We made loud music, with vocals, with his rattles, banging on anything we could find.  I would talk to him and tell him all about the world around him and what to expect and he would stare at me with those huge, cornflower blue eyes, drinking in the sounds of my voice and his own native tongue.

Back then I was just a lonely, inexperienced, ignorant first time Mom looking for a lifeline.  For something to help me make sense of things.  I found it.  For right or wrong, good or bad, in part or whole, I found it.

A Hard Look Within, Part Nine

I didn’t know what post partum depression was. I had heard of it, but I couldn’t understand it.  I didn’t know I was about to live it.

We celebrated Carter’s four week birthday in Park City, Utah. We had made the eleven hour journey with Cain. I was still in shock about the apprenticeship and could not seem to wrap my mind around the fact that when I went home to Montana I would be going without him and with only our new baby. I kept wanting to think it was all a vacation. I didn’t want to be a single parent before my baby was two months old!

Cain had wanted us to stay in Montana for purely practical purposes. He didn’t want to give up the house, deal with moving and storage. Plus, it hadn’t been like the bastards had given us more than two days to completely change our lives anyway! Two days! I still couldn’t believe they could do that.

The drive home was one of the longest drives in my life. I drove down the road to despair on that car ride home. I couldn’t get used to this little being that was completely dependant upon me for his survival. I could see him, touch him, hear him. I nursed him. I bathed him. Yet there was this level of unreality still attached to the idea of him being mine. I couldn’t seem to make the connection that he was a real living breathing human being with feelings, however new. I couldn’t feel him in my heart.

When I got home, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t feel like myself! I didn’t know who or what I was. I was Carter’s mom. But the title ‘Mom’ linked with my name didn’t make sense. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

My days began to blur together in a haze. All I wanted to do was sleep. Carter was a good baby, my experience now tells me. I didn’t know enough about healthy breast feeding practices to know not to supplement with formula. I had read somewhere that new mother’s should take advantage of the baby’s naptimes to sleep as well. So I did. Cain sent money home. I stayed in the house and watched cable television. My Mom and, even more rarely, my Dad, would occasionally come to visit, but not often. Mom called everyday to chat about what she was doing. Other than asking in a half hearted sort of way how I was, she didn’t seem to want to hear about any difficulties I was having. So I didn’t talk about it. My Mom had never really wanted children. She felt it was more expected of her. It was what you did after marriage in her day.

I didn’t have my own car at this time. We had used a rental car for Carter and me to get home. Cain’s best friend Leon would come to take me to the grocery store every couple of weeks and check up on us. I never felt that comfortable around Leon and to me the visits seemed awkward. Most weeks would go by with me only going out on the front porch to get the mail, hoping for a letter from Cain.

Cain’s letters were always very eloquently written. Ironically, he could show more emotion toward me in his writing than he ever could in person. I know he was lonely as well and I think it was because of this he found more ways to express the feelings he kept so much to himself ordinarily. We did miss each other.

The letters were a bittersweet blessing. They brought me pieces of Cain but were a tangible reminder of his absence. My heart broke a little every time I got one. I counted the days until we could see one another. I tried to tape letters on my tape recorder, sounds of Carter as he grew bigger. I still have some of the tapes and I sound completely depressed and pathetic. I took pictures by the dozens and always had doubles printed so Cain could see every week how much our son was growing.

I felt like a paper doll playing pretend. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! I didn’t want to try and figure this out all alone! I didn’t know who to talk to about it. I slept. I ate too much. I gained weight. My sleep schedule, always touch and go before parenting, got really fouled up. I never felt like I had a moment to myself, even in this ignorant self imposed isolation. I stayed up late watching movies that meant nothing to me. Soon, I wasn’t wanting to get up when Carter got up. I would change him, make him a bottle and put him back in his crib. If I was tired I would try to go back to sleep. For a long time I slept in the same room with him, but would put in earplugs to muffle his crying. He would cry for an hour or more before falling asleep in exhaustion.

I was so wrapped up in my own miserable self pity that I couldn’t see or understand that I was emotionally neglecting my baby. I would get up with him later and play a bit with him, but I honestly can’t say if I could have brought myself up out of that black pit far enough to give a shit that I was neglecting him. How my heart cries at the thought of it now. How I so wish I could go back and pick him up, the him that was then, and tell him how much I loved and wanted him. Ah, the sting of the bittersweet ‘if only’.

I still have not forgiven myself for this, post partum or not. I look back and think, with the knowledge and hindsight I have now; “Why didn’t you get up off your fat, lazy ass and DO something? ANYTHING? Why?”

But I couldn’t. My whole world was covered in a black caul and I could not tear my way out of it.

My sister, G gave me her old Chevy Nova. I finally had transportation. Still, though it gave me more self sufficiency, I could not find my way out of this inner blackened landscape of depression.

Carter was almost five months old and I had enough money to drive to Salt Lake City where Cain was now working. I needed to get away. I talked to Cain’s step mom and asked her to take Carter for the five days I would be gone. She agreed to. So I left my little son so I could selfishly go spend a week with his father. Cain didn’t seem to mind. I imagine if I had a hard time adjusting to Carter’s reality being with him day after day, he was even more of a figment to Cain.

My breasts became engorged and the manual breast pump only relieved the pressure a little. I didn’t know how to use it well. It was a constant reminder that I had a child at home waiting for me. I tried my selfish damndest to ignore it. I knew he was taken care of and probably didn’t miss me.

My son. My baby. A child that I didn’t even feel bonded to. I knew on some level that this was seriously messed up, but I didn’t know what to do about it. We didn’t have money to spare for anything. I didn’t know who to reach out to. My internal voice told me only weak people or users went to others for help.

I knew something was wrong with me. I cried over it to Cain. He would hold me, but emotionally he was distant. He was usually emotionally unavailable, but strong emotion on my part, especially the tears seemed to push him even further away. I didn’t know what to think, feel or do. He couldn’t help me. The person I needed most to be there for me couldn’t because he couldn’t deal with emotions.

I knew it was messed up that I was feeling so apathetic toward my own baby. My son. I didn’t know what to do. He needed me! He wasn’t even a very demanding baby, but I still felt stifled. I cried a lot on the drive home. I was numb and exhausted. He seemed happy and well cared for when I returned. Not overly excited to see me or anything. I took him home and the same cycle started again.

I had by this time, moved into the other bedroom in the basement. The mother in me now is horrified to think I did this…being on a whole separate floor from my baby! What if a fire had broken out? What if, what if? But the Creator had been looking out for us then, not that I could see it.

It was a highly unlikely way that brought me to bond with my baby. Having nothing else, looking for something, ANYTHING to alleviate or change the frozen landscape of emotions locking me so tightly in this unchanging world of black misery. What brought me to my son would, down the road, have a hand in taking him from me, but at the time and to this day, legal or not, all I can say is it saved my sanity then and taught me how to look at my son as a person. A real live, feeling, growing and miraculous person.