Hortus Deliciarum

This NPR story, or rather, the comments on it, are driving me nuts.

For the link-phobic, it’s an article on a low-income family. The mother explains that she struggles to feed her three children, husband, and herself on the $600 in food stamps they receive per month. Comments include the typical “fresh food is cheaper than junk!” nonsense coming from people who, clearly, don’t realize that I can buy a giant bag of Cheetos for the same price as a bell pepper out of season (that’s for non-organic. Don’t ask me how much an organic pepper costs, because I look at the price and my eyes glaze over), and I can tell you which would provide more calories and last longer for my four-year-old if I were on an even more limited budget.

I choose the bell pepper most of the time but, as a result, our groceries aren’t cheap. If my parents didn’t split the grocery bills with me, I suspect we’d probably spend nearly $600/month on groceries too (produce is hugely expensive in Seattle), and that’s for three of us. Also, my four-year-old has grown up on fresh vegetables and fruit, which means that he’s acquired a taste for them. I also know how to turn that bell pepper into a meal with crushed tomatoes, Italian sausage, and pasta. Not only do I have the income to afford fresh foods, I also have the skills to create meals from them. I may look at $600 and think it’s a lot of money to spend on groceries in a month but I know nothing about the mother in the story and her education regarding food, cooking, and nutrition. How presumptuous to judge her based on what my skills are…and most of those commenting on the NPR article are doing just that.

Others tell her to just get rid of her car, which she uses to drive around to try to find the best deals for her family, and walk, assuming that there’s a real grocery store within reasonable walking distance, or that her family doesn’t need the car to, you know, get to work. Cars in this country are, in many areas, NOT a luxury. Bus service is nonexistent or so bad that you spend so many extra hours trying to get places on the bus that you give up. The Seattle area is blessed in its bus service and even we may lose that as budget cuts continue.

There are, of course, the inevitable comments on how she and her son would be thinner if they ate healthier food (natch!) and the comments entirely ignore the words of the food bank administrator who, quite rightly, points out that a gallon of milk is a lot more expensive than the equivalent volume in soda. I wince at the price of eggs, or milk, when I go shopping. When I try to do the right thing and buy free-range eggs, they cost me a LOT more than a giant Costco-sized tray of battery-farmed eggs where the chickens are kept in terrible conditions. Organic produce is insanely expensive, even at our local farmers’ market, which I think actually costs MORE than the equivalent organic produce in a local grocery store.

There is no “just do this” answer to the issue of feeding a family, especially when one is surviving on very little money, relatively speaking. People who live in co-ops on quinoa and organic kale (one of the commentators on Facebook mentioned these food products multiple times in his description of his own diet/lifestyle) are more privileged than they realize. Education can go both ways, not just in teaching people how to cook and put together balanced meals on a budget, but in teaching people who’ve never faced those challenges about not judging everyone by their (ridiculous and frequently unattainable) standards.

For the most part, all appearances on this blog to the contrary, I’m a fairly contented person. I have a husband with whom I have a relationship that deepens every year, a son that makes my world a brighter place every single day, parents who love us so much that they are willing to make some pretty substantial financial sacrifices to help us have an inexpensive, safe place to live, and family and friends who show their kindness and love more than I have the right to expect, given how miserable a correspondent I can be!

I have so many blessings and, although I tend to vent quite a lot in this space, I see those blessings. I get it. I do.

Depression is not caused by the inability to see blessings, at least not in my case. Depressed people, or at least this sometimes-depressed person, can absolutely see all the good things in our lives. We know that they’re there. We simply can’t find any joy in them. When I am depressed, the goodness in ME is what disappears, leaving me absolutely certain that in a world of beautiful, wonderful things, I am a dark, joy-destroying, horrible creature who, if anything, diminishes the goodness in the world around me. This is why it always annoys me when people advise the depressed to “just get over it! look at how many wonderful things surround you!” Yes, wonderful things surround me. Shame I’m not wonderful!

I’m crawling out of the depressed place that I was in earlier this week. I’m still stressed, still tense, but not because of depression. I can suddenly see the good in myself again and that is a real blessing. I suspect that last week’s depression was all about the hormones, lovely things that they are. I have a Mirena IUD and I find my mood swings are definitely more pronounced with it, alas.

What people don’t understand about depression, but most specifically about recovery from chronic depression, is that it is a spiral path. As you travel through your day, your week, your month, and your year, you revisit those dark places. You can feel entirely balanced, entirely happy (or, at the very least, almost entirely content with your life) and, suddenly, you have moved far enough along that spiral to come back to the place that you were. Now, notice that I said spiral and not circle. You will be farther up. Farther out. Chances are that, as you travel upward and outward, the depressed periods will become shorter and less extreme. You will more easily recognize them for what they are: a chemical imbalance in your brain that’s keeping you from thinking rationally or experiencing emotions in anything like a normal way. You will pull yourself through them more easily, because you know that they will pass.

You see, I didn’t realize that about depression when I first started this journey. I thought I’d FIXED IT! I thought I’d solved all of my problems and made it all right, because I’d figured out that I had issues around being a TCK (third-culture kid), that I had issues around family and childhood, that I had a semi-molestation experience as a young teenager that affected my view of men and my body, that I had serious problems with trust, even when it came to my nearest and dearest friends.

I knew it all, so now it was all better, right?! I was HAPPY! I was IN LOVE!

And then I hit a huge transition, graduate school, and it was a punch in the gut. I was lonely, I felt out of my depth, I felt like nothing I did was good enough, and suddenly I was back in that depressed space. I finally hied myself to a support group and stress relief workshop, and suddenly I WAS HAPPY! I got married. I discovered FA for the first time. I was confident! I was secure! Life was good and I’d finally kicked that depression malarkey into the dust!

And then I had a baby and PPD hit hard, hard, hard.

I spent the better part of his first year depressed again, to the point of being very nearly suicidal. What was wrong with me?! Why had I failed yet again?! Everyone would be happier without me. I got anti-depressants from my GP and started into the light again. I found a dear friend with a son my own son’s age. My son started sleeping through the night. I was happy.

So we moved, back to Seattle, because it was cheaper than rents in Manchester. All the old TCK traumas around moving came crushing back on top of me. I was closer to suicidal than I’d been since I was a teenager. I hated myself for being in this place again, for not being smart enough/clever enough/good enough to have FIXED THIS ALREADY.

Thanks to meds, a therapist, and a wonderful HAES-friendly nutritionist, I made it through that really dark, long bit of the spiral and now, as and when I recognize myself falling back into those patterns, I can remind myself that this, too, shall pass. Untarnished happiness will come back again. Contentment will return. I have to recognize the dark places in my journey and understand what’s causing them but I will get through.

I wish I’d known at the beginning that I’d find that place on the spiral again, because I had such unrealistic expectations of how easy it would be to overcome something I’d been dealing with for the better part of my life. One doesn’t just fix something like that in a month, a year, or even a few years. It comes back and it can come back with a vengeance. Now, however, I know that’s true and I know where to look for help (and, I hope, recognize better when I need to reach for outside help because it’s too much for me to deal with on my own).

There may be people for whom lifelong depression can be dealt with in one fell swoop. I don’t know. I’m not one of those people. My friends, the ones who’ve struggled with depression, tell me that, for them, it isn’t true. They, like me, must move along the spiral. We hope that we will eventually come to a place where the darkness is completely gone and just a memory but we work with what we’ve got; imperfect lives that need extra time, extra patience, and lots of help from the people who love us the most. And, most of all, we have to remember that there are people who love us, for whom our presence is a blessing and never a curse.

Here’s to moving to the lighter part of the spiral, at least for today.

I’m full of things I cannot say and they are bubbling inside me, making me want to scream with the misery that is being an adult who tries to be sensitive to others and make her way reasonably smoothly through social interactions.

So.

I need to mosaic. I need to do something that has no pressure involved, that creates that strange state of meditation where you do mindless, repetitive work that somehow draws from the deepest part of your being to create something new. I need to not think about any of the stress points in my life.

This weekend, by golly, I’m going to the studio and I’m going to mosaic my heart out. And I’m going to love it.

Tags: mosaic

I posted this on my LJ today, after reactivating it yesterday. My thoughts on friendship, fatness, and how far I’m willing to go before self-hatred is too much for me. I don’t know how the size ratio applies to readers of this journal, versus on LJ, because this is obviously part of the Fats feed. I think the gist is the same…

***

I reactivated my LJ yesterday – I took a week to think about my social media participation and what parts of me I feel I can share, or not share, online and still feel safe.

Something I will be entirely and completely honest and straightforward about are my feelings about size.

That’s me, there, in the front with the laptop (yes, I am a woman, in case you weren’t aware – that’s my husband in the back). My four-year-old took that picture. On my entire Flickr photostream, I have about a dozen pictures of myself, most of which came from this photoshoot, taken by my friend Maricar.

Yes, I’m fat. I’m fatter, I think, than 99% of my friends list (and possibly 100%, although without knowing my weight, and yours, I couldn’t tell you that for sure). The reason that I’m only in a tiny fraction of my Flickr photos is not just that I’m usually the photographer, but mostly because I avoid photos like the plague. It has only been in the last year that I have admitted that it might be nice, if I were to drop dead tomorrow, for my son to have some pictures of me. It might be nice, when he’s seventy and I’m decrepit or dead, for him to have his mother in some childhood photographs and not have me be an absent figure.

Body hatred is nothing new to me. I look at myself in those photos and I have to stifle automatic loathing. I have to remind myself, constantly, that those involuntary feelings about my size are an entirely artificial construct. For the vast majority of recorded and unrecorded human history, my body would be an ideal, not a figure of public disgust and shame.*

I am an unashamed feminist. I may find re-spellings like “womyn” very unappealing but I passionately believe in the right of women to make our own choices, live life on our own footing, and be independent from external judgment on our decisions, our bodies, our looks, and our lifestyles. We feminists seem to be very, very good at attacking The Patriarchy [tm] for trying to fit us into a one-size-fits-all view of what women should be. We seem to be abysmally bad at challenging anything that relates to expectations of how women should look and a discourse on fatness is, in many cases, still entirely absent from feminism (so far as I can tell, based on sites like Jezebel, where fat hatred is still rampant). I am not an expert on feminist theory, so I will admit that I could be wrong, but so far I’m not seeing it in many places.

I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the friends I have who are not obsessed with exercise and/or dieting. Even if they aren’t actively doing either of the latter, chances are they are still hating on their bodies. These are intelligent, creative, funny, WONDERFUL women who distill their essence down to one single question that defines their entire value: fat or thin?

And the thing is…by reinforcing that societal image of themselves and actively embracing it (and rebelling against any challenges to it), they are also imposing it on me, even if they want to claim that “it’s not about you, it’s just my image of myself!”. As I said, I am fatter than 99% of you reading this entry. When I walk into a restaurant, I have to eye up the seating – I can fit in just about any seat but one with arms is likely to hurt, and outside cafe seating could well be so flimsy that I’m afraid that I’ll break it. My doctor’s one-size-fits-all bathrobe that she uses instead of a hospital robe still lets parts of me hang out. I get scared that I will get kicked off an airplane. People avoid sitting next to me on the bus unless there are no other seats available and sometimes, even then, they’ll stand instead of allowing my fat to potentially touch them.

I am an object of loathing and disgust in American (which should really read: Western) society. It is acceptable to torture, mock, and torment people of my size and be hailed as heroes (Jillian Michaels and Gillian McKeith, I’m looking at you).

I don’t mean this as a fatter-than-thou competition, because it isn’t. No woman, even a thin woman, is safe from judgement about her size in our society, but so few women seem to be willing to acknowledge how huge an issue that truly is! Rare is the conversation amongst multiple women where references to “dangerous” foods or food “weaknesses” or outright calorie/diet/weight-loss discussions are entirely absent.

This is something I face every single day because of my size but all women face societal pressure to look a certain way. My “morbidly obese” body just makes me more of a target. Dealing with constant reminders from people who are my friends that their bodies, and therefore my body, which is much fatter than most of theirs could ever be, are ugly and unacceptable hurts. It feels like a physical punch to the stomach.

Yes, yes, people claim that what they think of their bodies doesn’t translate into how they think of my body…but if someone is angry because she is between “regular” stores and Lane Bryant and hates her body for it, it’s hard to believe that she would find my body, which which doesn’t even fit in most Lane Bryant 26/28s any more, acceptable in any way, shape, or form. When that friend looks at the pictures above, what kind of judgement is she imposing on me, if her own body is an object of shame and disgust? Surely if she is a size 10, and feels she should be a size 4, or a size 20 and feels she should be a 12, she is inherently fearing that someday, if she keeps “letting herself go,” she will look like me.

And if looking like me is the worst possible thing that could happen (and some people would rather be dead than fat), fundamentally, what are those friends thinking about me, themselves, and other women? That is a problem and anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.

When a friend calls herself a “fat cow” or a “whale” or bemoans her lack of control, what is she thinking about how I look and how I behave? If I am a size 30 and she is a size 12, how much more disgusting must she think my habits are than hers?

When we accept and internalize a societal norm and apply it to our own bodies, we are also applying it to others. I can guarantee this, because I still look at very fat people (even people thinner than I am now) and have a gut reaction of “Lazy! Unfit!” that I have to actively suppress, reminding myself about the reality of fat politics and biology. As I learn to see my own body as something neutral, something independent of my value and self-worth, I am gentler and kinder to other people who are fat, because I acknowledge that their size is not a failing any more than mine is.

If it is unacceptable to remind a friend that size is irrelevant to value and her defense is that “it’s okay for you but not okay for me,” I passionately believe that says something about the person she thinks I, and other fat people are. It is a message not only to herself but to those around her and it’s one that I am absolutely not comfortable with.

It is absolutely ludicrous to claim that it is okay for ME to be fat but not you. It is utterly ridiculous to say that you think my body is okay at 300 pounds but that if yours goes over 150, you will hate yourself. WHAT is making you think that? Could it possibly be the same ridiculous societal impulse that tries to make BOTH of us conform? And, if you can see that it’s wrong for society to discriminate against me, why is it so outrageous that maybe, just maybe, the same attitudes that create that discrimination against me have formed your opinion of yourself?

And maybe, just maybe, you need to reconsider that and be kinder to yourself (and, by proxy, to all women?)

It’s funny how, when my taller friends go to the store and can’t find jeans that are long enough, it is the fault of jeans manufacturers for not accommodating them. When I buy a house and the stupid counters are all slightly too high, because I’m short, I hate the fact that there are standard counter heights that don’t work well for me. But, if I go to Sears and I can’t fit any of their clothes, it is automatically MY fault for being too large/too busty/not busty enough/having hips that are too large/having hips that are too small/having broad shoulders/having sloping shoulders.

If I can’t find a swimsuit that fits, it’s because manufacturers base their clothes on an arbitrary “standard” size, on a mannequin and not necessarily on any true female shape, especially not an individual shopper’s shape. Why should I, or any woman, base my worth on the fit of a manufacturer’s clothing, rather than being angry that they can’t make clothes that suit very many women at all (just ASK me about the horror that is plus-size fitting).

Changing how we view ourselves is probably the hardest task of all and I should know. I am constantly fighting that battle. Not even seeing that there is a battle to be fought? That scares me.

If you are a friend of mine who feels that your size defines who you are and you can’t see that there’s even a tiny problem with that**, you may find that you want to remove me from your friends list, because I cannot stop myself from fighting back (even if I try to do it gently) against a worldview that inherently diminishes my value (and yours!) as a human being based on a trait over which we have little to no control.

In my depressed phases I frequently share private thoughts that have little or no connection with logic…and it’s good for me to have reminders that no, really, I AM a valuable person and that impulse to go kill myself/hide away in my room is probably not healthy for me, that I need to examine it, and that people love me.

Claiming that a true friend will just say “I feel shitty about my body too” instead of “I feel shitty about my body too but let’s try to remember that we are valuable people regardless of our size” is something I just don’t understand and it seems to be rampant on posts complaining about weight.

That’s about it. That’s where I am. I can make a lot of compromises…but I’m not going to let a friend actively hate her body and not see anything WRONG with that, without speaking up, any more than I would want no one to speak up if I were saying that I hated myself because I’m stupid and an utter failure, because it just isn’t true.

—

*I don’t mean to say that my body SHOULD be the ideal. I don’t think there should be an ideal – sizes should be seen as equal and morally without any positive or negative value.

** I do draw a distinction between people who are exercising because they feel unfit. I understand what a powerful role exercise plays in energy levels and I like to hear about what is working to keep you feeling healthy and strong! That is entirely different from telling me what your diet plan is, or how much you hate your body the way it is. Feeling uncomfortable in your body because it’s not at the level of fitness you would like is very different from detesting it solely because of weight.

I deleted my livejournal yesterday.

I’ve been on livejournal for eight years. Eight. Years. I’ve blogged about marriage, miscarriage, and parenting woes. I have good friends on the site and friends I keep mostly because I don’t want TEH DRAMA!

A friend’s post set me off. She said that she hated her “fat cow” self. I tried to help and, in the end, didn’t…and got dumped on by an otherwise-uninvolved and unknown-to-me friend, who knows nothing about me, nothing about my motivations, and quite possibly nothing at all about FA or the fact that it IS possible to be fat (or a ‘tweenie) and not hate your body.

It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and I couldn’t cope. I just deleted the LJ. I’m in the midst of reassessing what I do with the internet and social media. As someone who may well be an All Growed Up [tm] librarian one of these days, I have to be careful about my internet presence being professional. At the same time, I have causes that I passionately care about. How do I juggle that, and participate in an active online dialogue?

I was telling Katie that I am in a weird place, struggling to figure everything out. I’m a little depressed, a little overwhelmed, and, on the online front, tired of battling libertarian cousins who want to protect the rich and “liberated” women who think it’s entirely okay for other women to bash their bodies. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the friends I have who are not either obsessed with exercise and/or dieting. If they aren’t doing either of the latter, chances are they are hating on their bodies. These are intelligent, creative, funny, WONDERFUL women who distill their essence down to one single question that defines their entire value: fat or thin?

And it’s too big a problem for me. It’s too big a problem when, as I posted in my final LJ post, I still have days when I hate myself because I have to go into a restaurant and eye up the seating – I can fit in just about any seat but one with arms is likely to hurt, and outside cafe seating could well be so flimsy that I’m afraid that I’ll break it. To have constant reminders from people who are my friends that their bodies, and therefore my body, which is much fatter than most of theirs could ever be, are ugly and unacceptable hurts. It feels like a physical punch to the stomach and I am tired of fighting back against it.

Yes, yes, I know that what people think of their bodies doesn’t translate into how they think of my body…but if someone who is angry because she is between “regular” stores and Lane Bryant, hates her body for it, it’s hard not to hate my body, which doesn’t even fit in most Lane Bryant 26/28s any more simply because I hear her opinion. I have to fight damn hard for my tranquility and I just don’t want to fight for it at the moment. I’m tired, my house is a mess, and I feel like all I want to do is be a “blanket slug” (my son’s term for himself when he shlumps around under my duvet).

I want a makeover. I want lots of pretty, free clothes that fit. I want a clean, organized house full of natural light. I want a deck full of thriving flowers, instead of the pathetic display that it currently is because NOTHING has thrived in Seattle’s miserable spring weather.

I want a world where my size is entirely irrelevant, except insofar as people provide me with a sturdy chair that I can use, or clothing that is both attractive and within my budget.

So I deleted my LJ.

I’ve been craving Cheetos for the last couple of weeks. Knowing as I do that denying a craving only makes it worse, I’ve been buying Cheeto Puffs by the bag-full but I can’t seem to stop craving them. It’s been a long time since I had a food that, physically, I could eat until I was sick. I’ve been cutting myself off before that point, because I don’t want to pay the price of an upset stomach because of blasted Cheetos, of all things, but I don’t understand it. When I’m not craving Cheetos, or Three Musketeers Crisp bars, I’m desperate for something else to eat – that mindless, binge-eating desperation that is sure that the next bite of ANYTHING will be the perfect bite that finally fills up the dark hole of depression.

It could be worse. I could be eating a lot more. I’m learning that, no, food doesn’t fill it up. I just don’t know what to fill it up with and that, my friends, is the perpetual dilemma.

I don’t understand why I’m craving food so badly and I don’t want to forgive myself for the fact that I’m still struggling so hard with FA, that I’m not an exercise-fanatic, that I am just a fat woman with the same old problems as everyone else.

Except, of course, for the physical size that makes everyone notice me.

I don’t know what’s brought on this particular period of depression – it would be so nice if it would just go away and I could be sane again. It’s been weeks now.

I’ll go back and undelete my LJ in a few days, when I’ve had a while to think and re-evaluate. I just wish it were as easy to turn off all the other things in my life that are frustrating me.

It’s been one of those days.

It’s been one of those days when you walk in the door and the receptionist is away, so you are now responsible for training the temp (who, thankfully, has already been requested by your boss), and the minute you digest THAT little piece of news, you head back to the kitchen for breakfast only to discover a sinkful of dirty dishes left by lazy colleagues. So, because you have nothing better to do, of course, you unload the dishwasher and reload with the dirty dishes, sit up at reception until the temp arrives, and then try to get your work done.

Oh, and when you send an over-the-line e-mail out being sarcastic about the dishes and people’s kindness in leaving them for you, you get in trouble with your boss but refuse to back down (because really, if people are complaining that you’ve told them they need to do their own dishes, well, it’s THEIR issue, not yours).

And on top of it all, you’re tired, because it took you SO long to get to sleep last night (for no apparent reason) and your kid was talking in his sleep at 4:15 and woke you up because the baby monitor volume was up, and you had disturbing dreams about huge black Burkinabe scorpions getting loose in your house around your child. Oh, and you’re now down to one pair of jeans, which are a little tight anyway, but you were hoping to get them to last a little longer in case Lane Bryant & Catherine’s decide EVER to make more Red Triangle Right Fit jeans in blue…only you put your socks on and, in so doing, realize there’s a hole in the thigh of said jeans.

Then, because you ARE tired and feeling overwhelmed, you find all those old self-hatred tapes playing. YOU ARE A FAT SLOB! YOU ARE WORTHLESS! YOU SHOULD GO ON A DIET RIGHT NOW! YOU SHOULD JUST KILL YOURSELF RIGHT NOW! NOBODY LIKES YOU! YOU ARE A FAILURE AS A HUMAN BEING!

And, logically, you know the tapes are wrong, that the people complaining about your e-mail are just being jerks, and that buying a new pair of jeans isn’t the end of the world, only it’s hard to fight the tide and you just want to give up and either head right down to the gym and demand a 1200-calorie diet, or head to the newsstand next to it and stock up on Crunchie and Nutrageous bars.

Sigh.

Can I have a re-do?

I know this has been posted elsewhere on the Fatosphere but thought I’d be sure to include it here, also, as a reminder to those who have seen it elsewhere and haven’t yet participated. Looks like an interesting study!

Call for Participants

Hi, my name is Michaela A. Null, and I am a doctoral student in Sociology at
Purdue University. I am doing a study about the embodiment of size-accepting fat
women, with attention to the ways in which gender, race, sexual orientation, and
body size intersect.

I am currently looking for individuals who are interested in volunteering to
participate in my study. If you are interested in volunteering to participate in
an interview, I ask that take an electronic informational survey, which will
take approximately 5 minutes. Please go here
[http://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_etvIKJ1LFV0gFNi] and complete the
informational survey. After all survey data has been collected, participants
will be selected for interviews, which will be conducted in-person, by phone, or
via internet chat, and will last between an hour and an hour and a half.

Participation is voluntary and participants must be at least 18 years old.

This project has been approved by my university’s Institutional Review Board,
which protects human subjects of research. I will provide confidentiality to all
volunteers and participants will be referred to by a pseudonym in all research
documents.

If you have any questions regarding this study, you can contact me at
mnull@purdue.edu. For more information on me, you can access my university
profile here [http://www.cla.purdue.edu/sociology/directory/?p=Michaela_Null].
You can also contact Professor Eugene Jackson, Assistant Professor of Sociology
at Purdue University, at jacksone@purdue.edu.

Sincerely,

Michaela A. Null, Doctoral Candidate in Sociology, Purdue University

My little boy is four today. Am I baking a cake? No. Is he getting the exact cake he wanted from Safeway (with Thomas, the Tank Engine on chocolate cake with fresh strawberries inside)? Yes. Did he get decorated cupcakes to take to daycare yesterday? No. Did he get brownies (lovingly made with a Truffle Brownie mix from Trader Joe’s)? Yes. Were any of them left to bring home? No.

Do I feel guilty for not being a perfect domestic goddess? Yes…and no!

Four years ago, at this exact time, my son was just a few hours old. I had in labour for 42 hours – back labour all the way – and let’s not forget the joy that is a fetal scalp blood sample without an epidural. Then, after a half an hour of pushing, I produced a tiny boy who needed resuscitation. I will never forget that first sight of my son, a little stranger with purple skin, who wasn’t breathing. My doula was there, holding my hand and keeping tabs on the little one when the midwife hit the alarm and the room was suddenly full of NHS staff members. Their sole focus was getting my son suctioned out, giving him oxygen, and getting him breathing. I will also never forget the exquisite perfection of holding my newborn: that terrified, exhausted excitement of knowing that, for better or for worse, he was mine and the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

That night I got no sleep at all, between the screaming baby/snoring mother next to us and my son being woken up by the other screaming baby. I was so tired in the next few weeks that I felt drunk; staggering over to our local supermarket just to get outside, I wondered if people were looking at me and thinking how disgusting it was that a woman could be drunk already at ten in the morning.

It was surreal. Then the PPD/PND set in. Amidst the fragments of memory of those early days, I remember screaming at my baby. I remember wanting nothing more than to walk out the door and never, never come back again. I remember wondering how many pills it would take to kill myself and how late in the afternoon I should do it, so that my husband would come back before Ciaran really needed anything.

And yet.

They aren’t wrong, those wise mothers that tell first-time mums that time is on their side and that this, too, shall pass. Those horrible first days, weeks, months, year are now a memory, softened by time and experience. Now I have a beautiful boy who reads, makes up stories and songs, and spontaneously pipes up “I missed you, Mommy!” when I get home from work.

It is so hard to believe that four years have passed, because in my gut I feel the terror of his first moments between life as part of me, and life on his own. I feel the horror of screaming at my baby, completely out of control and beyond rational thought, only the tiniest shred of reason preventing me from physically harming him or myself. I remember his first birthday, at Tatton Park, when I looked at him and couldn’t believe how big he was (and couldn’t imagine him ever being any bigger). And I treasure the huge hug he gave me this morning, and the spontaneous “I love you!” before I left for work.

Love. I had no idea, none at all, that it could grow to occupy so very, very much of one’s heart.

I’ve been in a creative slump lately – crafting, writing, and anything that actually takes independent thought or motivation have gone down the tubes. I blame it in part on school burn out and, of course, also on the rather hideous spring weather we’ve had in Seattle, where it feels like autumn instead of June. Rain? Check. Wind? Check. Constant gloom with very little sunshine? Check. I don’t mind rain but this is nuts.

Slowly, slowly, I’m working on getting my mojo back. The Berlin Woolwork Sampler by Needle’s Prayse is my current project, although I have yet to take any pictures because, well, WITH CLOUDS AND RAIN IT’S IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO GET OUTSIDE AND USE NATURAL LIGHT ARGH!

Oops. Do I sound frustrated with the rain?

I love cross stitch.

I stitch everything from dragons to samplers.

And I don’t like to make it easy for myself…

Her skin? I think this is on 28-threads-per-inch fabric, so there are close to 800 stitches per inch. Yup.

I think she’s on 32-count. That 1024 stitches per inch on her skin.

But never fear. I do little projects too…

When I’m not in the mood to create, I know I’m really, really burned out. Wishing I could take a stitching/crafting holiday for a week or so, to just feel like myself again. Frustrated that I can’t.

I’d hoped that with the end of the semester, I’d start feeling more energetic…and I did, for a week or so, until I realized that I’ve got to fit fifty hours’ worth of internship in this summer, when I’d much rather be having relaxing weekends with my family. Oh, and I’ve had two minor Bartholin’s gland abscesses in a row. FYI, if you want to Google that, be warned that it involves female genitalia and TMI for many of you. The first resolved with hot Epsom salt baths before getting too bad. The second just started, so we shall see – it’s only mildly painful at the moment but that could get substantially worse quickly. I need to go to Costco and buy more Epsom salts…when you have to take five or six super-hot baths over the course of three days, you go through them pretty quickly, so must be prepared if I have to go into Bartholin’s Battle overdrive.

The weather is even more changeable than usual for May, which means that everyone seems to be grumpy, and I think I’m as hormonal as can be. It would appear that, after four years, presumably as the level of hormones in my Mirena decreases, my body’s own hormones are reasserting themselves and making me far more prone to PMS. I’m tired, because I can never get my nine hours’ worth of sleep a night, I’m not getting any exercise (maybe one day I’ll stop beating myself up and feeling guilty about that), and I just want a really long vacation Somewhere Else Fun [tm] that isn’t flipping Seattle.

I’m struggling with old emotional wounds that are taking a very long time to heal. I can’t bash the people responsible over the head with a bat and processing the fact that it is impossible to make someone else aware of their own baggage is a far slower and less satisfying method, I must say, at least in the short-term. Must go see therapist. Must go do mosaics. Must do internship hours. Too much to do and too little time and energy.

I want something so, so badly…and I don’t know what.

This is a depressing entry. Move along quickly, before my mood infects you!