Sober
I lie in bed, inebriated by a chemical imbalance that was not created by a substance. I hold my breath so I don’t make too much noise as darkness sits on my chest and I muffle sobs with a cupped hand. Tears snail down my chin as my husband sleeps quietly beside me.
This drunken, stumbling carousel I am on pulls me in circles and out of bed. My version of reality lies flat on its back, everything is upside down, and I pace the hall, allowing myself to contemplate cruel, permanent choices.
How can hollowness feel so heavy
***
By morning, I am dragging as the hangover of last night’s intoxication settles in my body. The hot sun sears through the windows, the blue sky glares through metallic clouds... and I feel like I am coming up for a breath of air. My lungs are burning and relieved all at once. A moment where I am not smothered by mental illness or the fiery knot of anxiety twisting in my stomach.
Quietly, I pull at the edges of my sourdough loaf; trying to strengthen the dough without killing the air inside. My husband wraps his arms around me, rests his chin on my shoulder, and asks if I am okay. Am I giving myself away? Can he feel the sorrow written all over my posture?
I stand a little straighter.
“Yes ... I am just tired. Olive was up coughing in the night.”
It was the truth, but not all of it.
I don’t tell him that twelve hours ago I was telling myself I needed to end my life.
No, because my perspective is upright now, although still a little clumsy; and that would sound dramatic, self loathing, embarrassing.
I don’t tell him that him going to bed irritated at me, or that my friend who didn’t respond to a vulnerable text literally made me want to die.
Because it wasn’t really about that. It was about the callous drunkard in my head. I know that now.
I also don’t mention how I thought of the ways in which I would say goodbye to our babies. Even after all of the violent things that I imagined— that’s the part that hurt the most. That’s the part that gave me whiplash and forced me back into my body. I couldn’t do it.
***
The day carries forward, as it always does. I am constantly moving—letting the dog outside, packing school lunches, (not) folding laundry, arguing with the three year old, picking up the shoes, conditioning the ringlets.
Between the movement, there are brief moments I am reminded of what it is I am trying to run from. My friend’s baby is dying in her womb, a video of grieving three year old who lost her dad to suicide has gone viral, addiction took an old friend.
Has death always been everywhere?
It is time to cook dinner, so I shake my head out of the thought, and get to work. The girls are out on the trampoline. I suggest we pour dish soap all over and attach the sprinkler to spray beneath them. My husband immediately shuts down my request.
“That is an accident waiting to happen,” he says.
I prod sweet potatoes with a fork and spin them in boiling water.
“Your anxiety is going to ruin their childhood,” I thought.
The irony of that statement makes me sink inside of myself.
***
It is Mother’s Day, and my three year old is thrashing and upset. I hear her yell and kick and hit my husband upstairs. Her pain always translates to violence and anger. And it’s Mother's Day, so I don’t want to be the one to handle it. Not today.
I can hear her getting more frustrated, and it is clear a time out and a conversation is not going to deescalate the situation. I know exactly what she needs. I begrudgingly climb up the stairs and wrap my arms around her. She collapses into me and tells me that her sister hurt her feelings when she said she didn’t want to play with her. It wasn’t about the doll or the shove or the time out...she was hurt and she didn’t know how to say it. Not until she felt the weight of the pain lifted, first.
We spend the rest of the evening outside. The earth is starting to warm after a long winter and the sun is stretching out a little later each day. The sherbet sky melts in a silhouette of trees and we make our way inside. A chorus of crickets sings out of the window as I rub my girl’s sweaty forehead to sleep. I take a deep breath as I notice the new freckles peppered across the bridge of her nose.
My God, life is so beautiful.
Can a person want to live and die at the same time? To shrink and be noticed all at once?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
***
Depression is complicated. Sometimes it is clumsy, confusing, irrational, and loud. Sometimes it is quiet, muffled, hidden in a mom’s “I am just tired,” as she shapes a loaf of bread. Sometimes, it is even lurking beneath a warm spring night as the same mom says a prayer drenched in gratitude for such a beautiful life. Depression is difficult to find words for because often it doesn’t stem from anything tangible. It can come on quickly and without warning.
Anxiety litters my daily life with sharp edges and simple communication issues can send me in a spiral of rejection and pain; and I want to just give up. When I don’t allow myself to sit with it, this ache becomes angry and violent and drunk.
To move forward, like my four year old—I just need someone to see me, somewhere lost underneath the turbulence.
I just need someone to see me, even when the real me, the sober me, feels so embarrassed to tell the truth about the places I allow depression to take me. The funeral it begs me to plan. Things feel less heavy when I am sober; but things also feel trivial and melodramatic and dumb. Even now, I am tempted to erase these words … why tell the world my most humiliating secret?
I don’t want the pity.
Still, I will chase sobriety in every possible way, and part of that means telling the truth. And a bigger part of that means asking for help. Sober me has to fight for the girl who is sick.
So here I am, Sober. Telling the truth after the weight of the pain has lifted. Asking for help. And fighting like hell so I never have to miss the moments I am given to wrap my girls in safety, and count the freckles on their growing faces.
Words and photo by N’tima Preusser.