RealMental

By Karen Rani

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music …

~ Regina Spektor, Fidelity

I can honestly say I love Daren and the kids fully. With everyone else, including myself, I do have one foot on the ground.

That is about to change.

I’ve been abusing myself for years ~ a silent string of insults in my head and sometimes coming out of my mouth:

“God, I’m so fat.”

“If I had self-discipline, I could be better at controlling the food one way or another.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“I can’t have that, I’ll only gain more weight.”

“I can’t participate in ____, I’m too fat.”

“What are you doing in the kitchen AGAIN, you dumbass.”

“I’m such a lazy ass.”

None of these things are actually true, I know, but some of us are our own worst enemies. Would you call your friends any of those things? I hope not.

Furthermore, my oldest picked up this crappy attitude towards himself and began calling himself names that didn’t fit him either.

This morning before I went to the gym to meet with my trainer, I had this whole different post planned for the Stop the Abuse campaign I wrote about last night.

As my trainer showed me new moves with free weights, made me do squats for the first time in my life (you might recall I was asked to squat once before and how well that went),and introduced me to new machines, I said some things that she finally called me on.

I called myself a fatass, made jokes about my klutziness and although I didn’t complain about the work I was doing to improve myself, I was being very negative about ME.

My trainer told me that while I was doing all this work, I was being too hard on myself and that I needed to stop talking like that, to be more positive. She was really sweet about it, but stopped me in my tracks. She said that even by joking about ourselves that way, it’s negative. Pairing that with the fact that I constantly joke about whatever pains me, I think she is right.

You see, I went through a self shit-kicking in the last year that stemmed from a huge surge of emotions coming to surface after suppressing those very emotions for years. In short, I went a little nutty. I lost friends, I pissed off family. Hell, I pissed off strangers and readers! I felt very alone. And now? I feel pretty stupid about sharing it all with the internet.

Live and learn, I suppose. I won’t delete it ~ it’s part of my growth over the last year and I’m proud I made it through all of that.

For those who weren’t here for that, basically I was drinking a lot, starving myself, acting out, and being a hot mess in terms of my emotional topography on a daily basis. It was everything short of shaving my head. It’s all here on this site somewhere if you care to dig.

This self-abuse was so destructive, that I nearly wound up in the psych ward. My doctor wanted to put me away ~ called me bi-polar ~ wanted me on Lithium. That alone was scary enough to at least warrant a huge step: opening up to Daren about everything I’ve never shared with anyone. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and yet best possible thing I could have done.

While I’m still healing, and have come a long way since what we can call Karen Rani’s Nervous Breakdown of 2007, up until a few weeks ago, when I hired the trainer and decided to do things right for my body, I was still drinking. Every. Single. Night.

I love wine. Wine makes me tingle and numb and never makes me sick, like vodka does now. Funny thing about that Vodkarella, she hates vodka now…what will she do about her site name? Ideas?

The Self Abuse Train has stopped. It’s sitting on the tracks, always there to chug up again, but this time I’m tossing the keys in the river and walking away.

I’m walking towards daily fitness, towards the advice of my trainer, who says 5 small meals a day and lots of water, towards only drinking on the weekends, if at all, towards moderation, self control and positive thinking and speaking (and writing).

I want to love myself fully. There are some difficult habits to break, like this self-depreciating inner voice, but I’m giving it my best shot. I have a lot of personal goals, like getting fit enough to run a marathon by next spring, and learn to skate well enough to play hockey next winter, but this one goal is most definitely the most important for a lot of us, I think.

Ironically enough, tomorrow (September 27th) marks one full year of not smoking. What a way to celebrate!

So while I applaud those of you who are already at this point in your lives, and I’m anxious to join you, I suspect I’m not alone in this journey and hope that those who know they need to, will Stop the Abuse: of themselves.

xo

Also posted here.

By Violet

Autumn is a mixed-bag of emotion and memory and experience for me.

On the one hand, it (in theory, at least) marks the start of cooler weather and less yard work and the opportunity to eat thick hearty stews and homemade oatmeal bread without breaking a sweat.

I can wear my sweet, precious hoodies again and dig out some of my soft fluffy socks to wear inside my combat boots. There’s an anticipated trip to the Rockton Fair and that unmistakable smell of decaying leaves and, quite often, beautiful sunsets. Good things.

There are many good things about autumn and winter. I can see them and name them and touch them.

But the flip side, of course, is the Seasonal Affective Disorder creeping into my mood and my energy levels. And the depression that lurks.

The anniversaries and memories of death and dying and funerals and sadness – my parents, grandparents, best friend.. From September to February, my world is full of anniversaries of loss.

And let’s not forget the November anniversary of my month-long panic attack and the diagnosis of my panic disorder.

The skies grow darker, earlier, and I find myself wishing that I could curl up in a duvet until spring arrives. My beloved reminds me not to dwell on the memories. To acknowledge them and let them go. I’ve been getting better at it but it’s not good enough yet. Letting go. Letting go of the past.

At this point in autumn – the late days of September – I can already feel the tendrils of an impending collapse of my happiness. I try very hard to put it out of my mind. I remind myself that dwelling – on any of the aforementioned subjects – will not help me get through this. It will not make things better.

Dwelling is one of those things I do very, very well. I could win a gold medal in dwelling.

I dwell on conversations and images that are stuck in my head. I dwell on moments – pivotal moments – when my life shifted. I stack these memories up, together, and try to make sense of how I got to be this way. How did I become so afraid of the changing seasons?

The truth, of course, is that it wasn’t just one event or one circumstance that pushed me over the edge. And, perhaps, the cumulative effect of those experiences isn’t to blame either. There are too many possibilities – from the food I eat to the sleep I get – to try to make a neat, tidy package of explanation.

I realize I need to fight this. I realize that, if I don’t fight it, things will crash around me. But fighting is hard – I am an instant gratification junky. If it doesn’t impact on me immediately – a rush of adrenaline or a sugar-induced laughing fit – I can’t seem to make myself follow the rituals and routines. And yet, I know the only way to make it through the coming months is to fight.

If I don’t fight my hardest, my husband will come home from work and find me weeping about my life, my world, my existence. Weeping and blowing my nose and uttering absolutely useless phrases like, “I miss.. I miss.. EVERYBODY.” or “Everybody hates me and I have no friends and I am so alone.” Trying to expel a build-up of emotion that encompasses sadness and mourning and grief and fear is impossible. And, oh, god, there is so much fear.

This morning, my beloved dragged my SAD light out of the closet, dusted it off, and moved it upstairs to the bedroom. The idea is that I will bask in that light every morning from now until, well, next spring. I do not particularly enjoy the basking – try as I might – but I will do my best to sit patiently in the incredibly bright light for 30 minutes each day. Some days, I know, I will cheat and sneak downstairs earlier than I should.

I am back to my vitamins, my precious B12 and D and assorted omegas. I swallow them with my lunch – taking them at breakfast makes me nauseated for hours and hurts my stomach – and, if I believed in God, this is when I would pray. Please let the vitamins soar through my veins and adjust my chemistry and trick my cells into believing it is still summer and I am happy. Please let the B12 boost my sagging energy levels. Please, please, please. Please make it all okay.

I’m trying to motivate myself to get more intentional exercise – reportedly one of the best antidepressants available. I hate being sweaty and tired and out of breath but, as winter sneaks around me, I find myself tired and out of breath anyway. It’s as if my muscles are disintegrating in order to keep me motionless under a duvet all day.

I plod my feet along the treadmill in the darkened basement, trying to focus on recorded episodes of CSI – happily edited of commercials. I take advantage of the cooler days, when they come, and I walk the dogs to the park. I don’t feel any different.

Evidence that diet can impact majorly on depression makes me begin to read the various literature on the subject. Fresh vegetables. Omega-filled fish. Low fat, complex carbs. I know all of this and still I fight my body’s increased cravings for sugar and simple carbs.

I fight the instant gratification of junk food. Sometimes that makes me cry, too, as my body screams for cookies that will immediately soothe the anxiety and my brain shouts that I’m making it all worse if I indulge. It’s like those cartoons with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other – except, in this case, they’re both angry and hostile and glaring and I can’t win.

Everything makes me melancholy. Everything makes me question myself. Everything – everything – makes me feel guilty. For being alive, I suppose. I am incredibly uncomfortable about everything – the screaming cravings, the urge to hibernate, the grief, my own body.

I struggle and I fight and I do the very best that I can but, so many times, I fear that I can’t do enough.

Am I fighting biology and chemistry or am I fighting memories that are embedded into the very core of who I am? Where does my past and those experiences end and where does the seratonin begin? How can I keep myself afloat when I am so very, very tired?

I take my daily antidepressant – the prescribed kind, I mean – and I resist increasing the dose. It sounds dramatic to say that it takes away my personality in higher doses but I’m pretty sure it does. Even my husband, who loves me and wants me to be happy, will agree that I am not myself when I am on higher doses.

And some days I am okay – more than okay – and I fool myself into thinking that every day will be like this. I will smile and laugh and enthusiastically work on a project at the dining room table. I start to think that I’ve finally won out over the sadness – I’ve won the war. I feel alive and healthy and happy. Grateful. I feel like myself.

Then I wake – the very next day – and my body feels like lead. I run the previous day through my mind and wonder what I did wrong. Was it the sandwich for lunch or did I not get enough sunshine? Or maybe it was the day before that? How did I drain all the happiness out of my world while I was sleeping?

Autumn arrives and the fight begins and I am already tired of dragging myself up the endless mountain ahead of me. And I am afraid, no matter what I say. I am afraid of the months ahead of me but I will fight.

By Saviabella

Yesterday, I made an emergency appointment with my doctor because I had a horrible reaction to the drug I’ve been on for the past few months. Effexor combined with my monthly PMS symptoms to give me a lovely manic attack. A week’s worth of roller coaster mood swings, insomnia, and really strong impulses to do things that were not consistent with my personality or normal actions. It scared the fuck out of me. Fortunately, I am very self-aware, knew this was a possibility on this drug, and am strong-willed and stubborn as all hell, so I didn’t do anything I would have regretted. But I could have. And next time, it could be worse. So, I’m getting the hell off and trying something new.

It felt good to march into my doctor’s office and tell her what I wanted: off the drug, on a new drug that wouldn’t trigger mania or make me fat, a referral to a psychiatrist who wasn’t an asshole and whom I could work with collaboratively to explore the possibility of some version of bi-polar (which does run in my family), a note so I could drop the class I’m in without academic or financial penalty, and hell, throw in a blood test for iron and B12 levels while you’re at it because we all know I’m a crappy vegetarian.

The problem is, in these parts, the wait to get in with a psychiatrist is three to six months. Even people who, as my doctor puts it, “are in really urgent situations”, are unable to get in before then. There are too few in this city, and they’re overworked. The only way you can see one right away is if you’re hard-core suicidal, and I am determined not to let it get that bad. So, we wait. And we try another drug in the hopes that it doesn’t do something similarly nasty in the meantime, though we’re aware of that possibility with any of the drugs she can give me.

Finding a drug to try was a bit of a hassle. We ruled out Effexor, of course, because that’s the reason I was there. Then, she asked me, “Have you ever tried any other drug?”

Why, yes. How ’bouts I take you on a walk down memory lane, doc darling?

Right after my second university degree (I was about 24), I found myself in another city working a flaky job for a flakier boss. It did not end well. I became severely depressed and just wanted to go to therapy. But there was a wait for that, too (seriously, if you’re not suicidal, it’s hard to get help sometimes). My doctor shoved Zoloft at me. I didn’t want to take it, but she assured me, “If you don’t need it, it won’t do anything to you, and if you do, it will make you feel better, so you have nothing to worry about.”

Bullshit.

It certainly didn’t make me feel better. I was shaky all the time. I didn’t feel any less depressed. I just stayed in my apartment, being unemployed and watching my legs twitch for weeks, waiting for it to kick in, and knowing that it could take a full six weeks to do so. At around the seventh or eighth week, something happened. I started having suicidal thoughts. And not just any suicidal thoughts – I mean detailed, graphic, violent suicidal thoughts. I was terrified. I had felt suicidal in the past, but it was never anything like this, never anything this violent or graphic. I certainly wasn’t suicidal before I took the drug, so I knew it wasn’t me. I was scared that something terrible could happen to me, so I gathered up all the knives and drugs in my house and shoved them at my best friend for safe-keeping. (Now, that was a fun conversation. Would you mind taking all these sharp objects away so I won’t be able to hurt myself without meaning to? I can’t even have them in my house because I don’t know what I’m capable of. Thanks. You’re a doll.) I ate my steak with a butter knife for awhile and decided I was getting the hell off these drugs. Somewhere along the way, I wrote this poem:

Zoloft

I
Shaky
Jittery
Stomach tied in a knot
(one of those special kinds you learn
in Girl Scouts.)

II
I don’t want to leave my room.
Oh God, I want to leave now!
No, I don’t.
Yes, I do.

III
I’ll tell you what I want
what I really really want.
I want to take one of those
large kitchen knives
(and none of this sissy dainty
wrist-slitting crap) and
I want to plunge it violently
into my arm – tear
through muscle and tendon
grind away at bone
just to see what it would be
like.

IV
But instead,
I throw the little yellow happy pills
into the toilet
and pee on them.

Yes, I am now aware that it’s extremely unenvironmental to flush drugs, but at the time, I just needed to literally piss all over those motherfuckers and get them the hell away from me. I went to my therapist (I finally had one) and told her what was going on and that I was quitting the drugs. She encouraged me to take the drugs back to my doctor and tell her what happened, because doctors need to know when things go wrong so they can report adverse reactions to the drug companies. She had a point. This was 1999, before there were any warnings or implications on patient drug information that these drugs could cause suicidal tendencies in some people, so, looking back, she really had a point. Maybe my case actually made a difference? Ah, probably not, considering the fuckwad doctor I had. Observe:

Savia: [shoving the drug samples back at Fuckwad Doctor] Here. You can have these back. I’m not taking them anymore. They made me suicidal.
Fuckwad Doctor: Oh, that’s just the depression coming back.
Savia: I wasn’t suicidal before I started taking these drugs.
Fuckwad Doctor: You just need a higher dose.
Savia: No. I’m done. I’m not taking these or any drugs anymore. I’m just here to let you know that.
[Fuckwad Doctor looks at me like I’m a fucking idiot who is likely going to end up dead in a back alley somewhere, and I walk out of the office.]

I went off the drugs cold turkey and the suicidal feelings went away. I continued with the talk therapy and was fine without drugs to manage anxiety and depression for years.

But the fact that I had that reaction from Zoloft those many years ago means my current doctor, who is not a fuckwad by any means, is leery to give me any drug in that class. So, that eliminates all the old standbys – Prozac, Paxil, Celexa are out, and we’ve already established that Effexor is out, so that leaves us with a small third class of drugs, the best bet of that being Wellbutrin.

Any of you out there on this one? What do you think of it? I figure it’s worth a shot, and am knocking wood that it will help me get through the next three to six month wait to see someone who will actually be able to help me. After all, they say the third time’s a charm. Let’s hope they’re right.

By jb

One of the most interesting things about meeting new people, and starting new parts of your life, is that you get to see yourself through new eyes. I imagine that some people don’t like it, but I find it intriguing.

My most embarrassing–and perhaps most endearing–quality is that I have a seeming inability to pull shit together. I’m that girl–the one whose backpack falls open on the street, the one who always manages to forget something, the one who stands on the street in the rain while a car drives by, sending a 4 foot spray of water halfway up her torso. My med school friends Jacob and Joe take a good amount of pleasure just in watching my life; they don’t hide their laughter, and–halfway up the lecture hall, dripping wet and late–I find myself laughing too.

On Friday, I was going through my morning ritual of rummaging through papers to find that day’s lecture slides. I couldn’t find my biochem notes, and searched for three or four minutes before I found them crumpled up at the bottom of my backpack. I did my best to flatten them out as Joe and I laughed. “You’re a mess,” he said. “A mess.” And I am.

But I wasn’t always this way. I remember, once, I was walking through my high school hallway with a friend, and she looked at me and said, “You smile, and you look like you have it all figured out.”

And I thought I did. Preparing to go to the college of my choice, dating the
most wonderful boy, making good grades with lots of friends: I did think I had it all figured out. But somewhere along the way, I lost that poise and
perfectionism. I broke my back, I made some Bs, I slept through a Calc 3 test and finally allowed myself to skip a class or two. Sometimes, I thought my mind had cracked, and when I was sad, all I wanted to do was sleep or get better, but when the sadness went away, I thought my life was back on track.

I remember visiting my therapist as a sophomore, in late spring, and wondering why I was there. I was happy, wasn’t I? I had things figured out again, didn’t I? I thought I had come to terms with losing my job, and I thought things would be perfect again.

I can’t pretend that I am much older, or even much wiser, than I was then. But two years up the road, I realized that things didn’t have to be perfect, and that this is my life, and I love it. I don’t mind being a mess–it’s just what I do, and it works for me. As long as I have people laughing with me, I’m fine. It’s when the laughter stops that it gets scary.

Yesterday was the sixth month anniversary of my first dose of Lamictal, the drug I take to control my bipolar disorder. It is the sixth month anniversary, also, of the day I hit my eye on Joey’s bed during a tickle fight and he decided to stop saying “I don’t know” and “Maybe” and take me back as his mess, his bipolar wreck of a girl. The day we started laughing again.

He’s been visiting the last two days, and we have been doing our thing–lying together watching the B-52s on YouTube. Loading the dishwasher while singing to the Village People. Eating too much ice cream. Sleeping in a bed where we thrash around and steal each others’ blanket space, and roll onto each others’ pillows and turn in circles and talk incoherently all night.

Waking up, pulling the covers back to my side, I smiled knowing that this fitful oppositional sleep is the best sleep I get, and it’s the sleep I want for the rest of my life.

Loving him is the best thing I’ve ever done, even if I do it as a mess, even if I fucked it up a million times. We cannot laugh about the past, and I am bipolar, and I will be medicated for the rest of my life, and I surely am a wreck, a shambles, a hilarious mess–but as long as we can keep laughing at the present, I’ll be fine.

Originally published here.

By Kay

Last night I admitted that things aren’t better now that I’m back at school.

They’re supposed to be. Now that my parents aren’t lurking outside, waiting to attack me about my laziness and my messiness and my poverty, I shouldn’t have to hide in my bed all day.

Now that that boy isn’t dominating my thoughts and making me deal with the fact that he left me, I should be free to have control over my mind again.
This whole depression thing was supposed to be four months of hell, but it had a finish line. On September first I moved out of my parent’s house, back to my school six hours away from everything that happened this summer, and it was supposed to be over!

But it isn’t. I still don’t have the energy to get up in the morning believing that I have the power to change the world. I still feel trapped if I can’t escape back to my room after a few hours of sociable contact with my friends. I still can’t see myself as someone with any worth, or potential, or notability, or any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

And on top of that, I’ve been arguing with my person lately, which I hate doing. She thinks that the reason the pills aren’t working yet is because I’m not in the right mindset. She tells me I need to believe that they’ll work. I do believe that, because I’ve had them work for me before. I had them work for me when I believed that they wouldn’t work. So maybe it’s the pessimistic view that I can’t feel better that actually results in me feeling better.

She also says that I need to take some responsibility for my mental health, and to actually make the effort to get out of bed in the morning, live my day to day life as normally as possible, and not wallow in self pity while lying about in bed. And while I know that she’s right, I just can’t find the words to explain that when I’m horizontal and I’ve once again convinced myself that everything I do is pointless drivel that will lead to nothing, becoming vertical and productive is damn near impossible. Since getting out of bed is the logical thing to do when I wake up, how do I explain something as irrational as not getting up? Trying to explain this to everyone at school is even more . Right now I’m supposed to be feeling great. I’m supposed to be ecstatic that I’m back at school. I’m supposed to be fine. But I’m not. Everything is still so hard.

Originally posted here.

By Saviabella

I was spending some time with a friend of mine the other day and the topic turned to a good friend of hers. His name sounded familiar, some details sounded familiar, and then, the realization of who she was talking about hit me with such force, I felt as though I were struggling through a foggy haze. Nausea, dizziness, fear, anxiety. This couldn’t be happening. This is not possible. How can this be for real?

He has a last name. He has a neighborhood. He has a wife, who also has a name. He has children. He has friends who think he is a really great guy and feel sorry for him because he took it so hard when his mother died.

None of these people know that he molested a four-year-old girl 27 years ago.

I hadn’t heard that name for 15 years. I kept my tone as even as possible and forced my face into a mask of neutrality. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but I only asked one, to make sure it really was him she was talking about. It was.

Part of me had always wondered what happened to him. If he was still in the city. If he had children. If it was only a one-time thing or if he had done it again and again and again. If he ever thought about what he had done and regretted it. If he ever looked at his own children and realized how horrible it would be if anyone did to them what he had done to me. Or even if they were his latest victims.

I’m not really sure how I made it through the rest of the morning or lunch, but I managed, and then got the chance to go to my room and be alone for awhile. But I really didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts, because they were coming at me so fast that I couldn’t make much sense of them. I didn’t know what to think or what to feel. I tried to call Schmutzie, but she wasn’t there. Then, I tried Superstar, who must have been on his phone, because the voice mail picked up right away. As soon as I put down the receiver, I got several sharp pains in my stomach and felt my insides curl up into a ball. I ran for the bathroom and was violently ill.

There was something about emptying my digestive system of its contents that made me feel a bit better. I think I finally understand why so many people who were sexually abused have eating disorders. I understood the binging and overeating aspects of it before – that made sense to me because food fills a physical and emotional void and adding layers of fat to your body can feel very comforting and safe. But I never got the purging thing until now. It feels like you’re expelling this poison from your body, like a purification, like it’s taking the anxiety with it, even for a moment.

Still dizzy and shaking, I lay down on the bed. So many thoughts, so many questions. Do I say something to my friend about it? Would she even believe me? Is it even worth it to dig up this skeleton from his past? Maybe he was just a really screwed-up 16-year-old who made a stupid mistake and then went on to become a decent person? But then again, what kind of person is he if he ever made that kind of “mistake” (I mean, I certainly would never have done that)? Did the fact that he was almost caught mean he never did it again or did the fact that he actually got away with it mean he knew he could do it again? When he told everyone I was lying about it, did he convince himself of it, too, burying it in the recesses of his unconscious mind? Why does he get to have a normal life while I’ve had to struggle with the aftermath of his actions for the past 27 years, having it affect all aspects of my life, my view of myself, my relationships with men, my self-esteem, my body image, my health, my nightmares, my burden, my secret? And the guilt and disgust that I feel every time I think about the possibility that he may have done it to someone else because maybe I should have tried harder to get people to believe me, even though I only was four years old.

And, now, 27 years later, it comes down to the same thing: my word against his. No proof, no evidence. Just everyone wanting to believe that he could never do such a thing, that it was just too horrific and absurd. That the child must be making it up. Because toddlers have such intimate and detailed knowledge about penises and what you do with them, don’t you know?

I had a quick talk with Marlena, a friend who probably knows me better than anyone else, and a long conversation with Superstar that made me feel a bit better. (Verbal purging is definitely higher on my list than physical purging, thank god.)

“Do you want to know the answers to all those questions?” Superstar asked.

(long pause)

“…yes, I do. I do want to know. But I’ll never know the answers, because even if I go and confront him, which I could do, what are the odds that he’d tell me the truth about his life or even admit to me or himself what he did? I want to believe this was a one-time thing. I want to believe he was just a horny 16-year-old who didn’t really understand what he was doing. I want to believe that me telling put enough of a scare into him that he didn’t even think of doing it again. I have to believe that, because every time I think about the other option…” The wave of nausea began to rise again.

“…it’s hard to say. He was young. Maybe he was just curious, as sick and fucked up as that sounds…”

“I had to live next door to him for years after that. He was our paper boy. I remember walking by him on the street when I was seven, looking him straight in the eye, smiling, and saying , ‘Hi, ____.’ He never said ‘hi’ back. He only glared at me. Glared at me with such hatred that I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Because it was my fault he had almost gotten caught, because I didn’t keep our little secret.”

“Sounds like you scared the hell out of him.”
“I guess I was pretty fearless, even back then.”

Originally published at Savabella on April 25, 2007.

By She She

Before I had kids, I always thought I wanted girls. Only girls. I wanted to raise up a tribe of Amazon warrior princesses, little centered beings, preternaturally strong and wise. What did I know from boys? I might as well have Dalmatian dogs, for all I knew about boys.

Man, was I wrong. It was girls I didn’t know.

I spent the first year and a half of your life in a postpartum depressive fog, which is only now just clearing for good. On most days, the sun shines and I can see through whatever fog is left. I don’t remember much of your infancy, but I do remember clearly a particular day when you were about 9 months old. That day, one of your caregivers described you as a strong-willed baby who was going to be a strong-willed woman. I froze in fear. All along, I had thought you might be a sweet, serious girl – like your sweet, serious older brother. Horrified, I thought, “I don’t know this child at all.” I panicked. How could I have not seen this? You’re so full of life. If there’s a race to run or a hurdle to jump over, you’re there in full force. When I imagine you in my mind now, I see a blur of happy motion. But then, in the postpartum haze of unhappiness I didn’t see you at all. How could I have let this go on so long? I thought I was just stressed out, over-tired, a typical new mother. But, no, this was much worse. Much, much worse. This kind woman’s comment about you shook me so that I sought help for my depression right away. Thank god I did.

Sigh. Big, heavy, sad sigh. I wish I had been more present for you then. You deserved a mother who adored you from the get-go.

But now I’m better, getting better every day. This year I had to fill out one of those never-ending forms for pre-school where they ask you questions like, “How would you describe your child?” This was the first year I didn’t parrot what others said about you. This year, I filled all of the lines provided without hesitation. When I finally lifted pen from paper, I thought, “Wow. That was easy.” That’s progress.

You’re such a strong girl, strong in so many ways. And, as it is with almost everything, your strength is a double-edged sword. You can be obstinate and willful, more sass than sense. You don’t always do what I ask when I ask. In a word, non-compliant.

In my family, this was a cardinal sin for girls. In my family, the boys were stars, and the girls were supposed to be compliant. I wasn’t compliant, and neither was my sister. (This trait must carried on the x chromosome.) Because non-compliance was so unacceptable, I felt like I was broken, damaged goods. I came to this realization recently, and it scared the hell out of me. This is what I had been thinking about you! I thought it’s only a matter of time before something happens to bring out the inherent brokenness in you.

Nora, sometimes I feel like you deserve another mother, a mother who isn’t so driven by her childhood demons. A sunny, supportive, light-hearted mother, or a true Amazon warrior queen who can pass on her wisdom and strength to you. But, honey, your mama is just trying to figure it all out without doing too much damage along the way. And sometimes I can’t get out of my own way enough to even see who you are.

But let me tell you something I know now, Nora. There isn’t a damn thing wrong with you. You’re not predestined to have a difficult life because you’re a head-strong girl. Being strong-willed is your gift, not your curse. You’re not broken already. It’s mama’s lens that’s a little broken, a little cracked. Sometimes it prevents me from seeing you exactly as you are. But everyday, I’m polishing and polishing. I want more than anything in the world to be able to see you clearly, to be able to see my strong, bright, healthy, loving, glorious, funny, non-compliant daughter.

This old Hammerstein song just popped into my head.

Getting to know you.
Getting to know all about you.
Getting to like you.
Getting to hope you like me.

Actually, Nora, it’s not so important that you like me. It would be nice if we were one of those mother-daughter teams who like to do things together – go to the movies, have lunch, take walks – but I think we may need to walk across some coals before we get to the other side. We’re both head-strong and impatient, and I see some butting heads in our future. I pray to the god who still lives in my agnostic heart that when we finally do get to the other side, we’re both still standing, holding hands, facing the future together.

But for now I have a bigger wish. I want you to know I like you. I want you to feel it in every molecule in your body. I never want you to doubt that you are wanted and loved, exactly as you are, exactly as you came to us. There’s nothing about you that needs fixing. And your mama’s got your back.

Last Sunday in church, the minister said that even though we all make mistakes, inside we’re perfect. You leaned against me and asked, “Am I perfect, Mama?”

Yes, Nora, you are perfect.

Just as you are.

Originally posted here.