Hi Jess,
I’m writing to you here because I used to spill my guts here a lot. This used to be my sacred place where I sorted my thoughts, dreams, emotions, and traumas. For the most part, I write here as though the reader believes that they are the only one in the world who noticed that I published a new post. In reality, for the most part, my entries have 0 views. Sometimes, though, an entry will have 400+ views and some really sweet comments and DMs. This blog has always been where I allowed myself to be most vulnerable, as though no one were reading/because no one was reading/even though people were reading.
I abandoned it sometime when I started to fall into a deeper depression, I suppose. Whereas anxiety led me here to this blog to untangle the crisis-crossing worries, fears, and criticisms zooming through my head, depression left me blank. Empty. Flat.
Switched off.
I wanted to write to you telling you an arc of what I’d been going through: perinatal depression, the pandemic, a traumatic labor and birth, a traumatic postpartum hospital stay, sleepless nights as I stubbornly stuck to exclusive breastfeeding, getting on Zoloft, hiding in our home downtown while it felt like the city burned down around us, a COVID scare, mastitis, engorgement, milk blisters, Reynaud’s of the nipple, more pandemic, learning how to pump, starting a new school year in a pandemic (see: breastfeeding while teaching in my own bedroom after a sleepless night, attending to the traumas of teenagers navigating an uncertain world), increasing my dosage, working four part-time jobs, T not being able to meet any of his grandparents in his first year of life, therapy, motherhood, increasing my dosage again, group therapy; watching, horrified, as violence against folks who look like me and my family erupted on our very block and in our neighborhoods, gaining pound after pound, no longer fitting in any of my clothes, not recognizing myself in the mirror anymore, navigating a new way of being with my partner…
I wanted to explain to you everything I had gone through in the past twenty-some-odd months.
But right now, I finally opened my laptop to type to you because I need to vent about something right now.
I’m tired of feeling like the de facto primary care giver. I’m not saying that I am. I’m not saying that B isn’t doing his part. I’m just saying that I feel like I am and I don’t want to feel this way.
I’m so tired. I don’t sleep anymore.
I don’t know.
