My husband broke my heart tonight. He didn't know he did, but his words pierced through me more than my overbearing mother, abusive brother, or cheating exes ever have. As I finally shared with y'all today, I have been battling an extreme depression for months now, even before Little Bit was born. I bet you couldn't really tell could you? Yeah, I'm really good at hiding it. In fact, DH didn't know I was as depressed as I am until last week when I finally let him in on my little secret. Since then he has been very concerned, and rightfully so. Don't worry, I am not suicidal. I lost a dear friend to suicide and would never commit such a selfish act. That does not keep me from wishing some horrible accident would end my life. Of course, another part of me is terrified of something happening to me and leaving DH and LB alone in life. So anyways, now you kinda see the extent of my dark secret that is depression. I struggle to pull myself out of bed in the morning. Most mornings I wake up with DH, feed LB, see DH off to pt/work and then go back to bed, hoping and praying that LB will sleep long enough for me to get a nap. Lately I have been so depressed and exhausted that I let him cry. I am not of the school of letting children until 8 months cry it out by the way. I just can't will myself to interact with my son on those days.
I have some confessions to make and I hope you don't look badly on me for them. I don't feed my son his bottles. He eats 5-7 times a day. Since he was born I have held him and his bottle less times than I have fingers. The first little paper they sent home with us said do not prop the bottle. I had horrible PPD and my son screamed at my breast when I tried to feed him and DH had just had wrist surgery. Neither one of us was equipped to hold LB's bottle. Since then I have gotten worse and worse. I am still depressed but I have come to terms with not being able to breastfeed him. No, now I prop his bottle so I can surf the internet, read all the blogs I follow and who don't even know I exist, and check my e-mail a billion times a day. Blogging has really been the only thing holding my sanity together. You are mostly moms or military wives/gfs. You get me. You know what I am going through. DH tries his hardest, but he has no idea what it's like. I rarely hold me son either. He has a flat spot, not because he sleeps on his back, but because he spent so much time in his swing or bouncy chair. I felt angry, I felt unloved, I felt hurt, I felt depressed, now I feel guilty for not holding him but as I sit here, typing... I can not make myself stop and hold him. I need to tell someone this. I need to tell you this. If I stop now, let this post auto save and never press publish I'll just slip further and further into despair. If I hold my son instead of typing out this confession to you then I'll begin to resent him and none of this is his fault. My hormones and neurochemicals are off balance. It's that simple and that complex.
Now to tell you what my husband said to me that torn my heart out and literally brought me to my knees screaming. At the time I had no idea if he was being hurtful or caring. He came out of the bathroom and said "Honey, I've been thinking about it and I think we ought to hire someone to come clean the house. It obviously isn't going to get done and this way you can have more time to spend with Little Bit and blog." Right there. Right there, in those innocent words were "You aren't good enough. You love your bog more than me because you won't take care of the house. You are lazy. You are a bad mother. You are a failure!" He essentially told me "I have to spend my hard earned money on someone else to come in and pick up where you have failed." I stood up, walked as far away from him as possible {which happened to be in the back room that I had just worked so hard on a couple days before}, fell to my knees, screamed into my hands, felt my heart ripping in two, and cried. I was shaking uncontrollably by the time DH finished brushing his teeth and got curious as to where I had gone. He asked if I was okay and I knew in that moment that he hadn't meant his words to be a crude warning to shape up or "ship out". He really did think he was helping me by hiring a maid. I sobbed a cracked "no" and attempted to explain my plight.
I struggle to get out of bed each morning; this depression you've seen this week has been going on in secret for months; I try and try and am never good enough; not for my parents, not for my friends, not for my ex fiance, not for you; you never tell me I'm doing a good job; I'm such a failure and you just told me so. The whole time I was thinking in my head...it hurt so bad because you are right. I care more about my blog than about my son or my home, and as an extension, you. I was so upset because I was guilty. Because he was right.
So, I am going away. I am not naive. I know I need to spend some time online to keep my sanity, but I will not be here in such force as I normally am. I will miss your posts. I will not reply to every comment. I may not do all my memes. I will do Motivation Monday and Feel Good Friday because those two especially keep me going. I will likely only keep you updated via my new depression blog. Its on the right sidebar in case you haven't read about it in my other posts today. I will be copying this post to all my other blogs so all my readers know. I know you all understand, and truthfully, I doubt many people would notice that I disappeared for a few weeks... but like I said, I needed to write it down. I needed to tell someone. I needed to tell you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for caring.
PS I am not going to take the time to proof this blog entry so I hope it is understandable and not too choppy.
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