PEAKS AND VALLEYS

Over the past month I've noticed a marked improvement in my depression. I've been able to decrease my medication and still maintain my ability to connect with others and be joyful. Unless I am not leaving the house for any reason, most days I willingly get out of my sweatpants for at least a few hours. There are big life improvements that have helped me. Finding out that Lauren's aorta does not need surgery in the foreseeable future, having her night time sleep improve and being able to spend time working on my relationships which have been pushed to the back burner since last summer, have all made life more enjoyable. I know that there will be bumps in the road but I feel like I've come a long way. 

This is my psychologist's rendering of how I'm doing. 

According to him, my general trend is up. There are times along the way that things dip for awhile but as long as the overall direction is up, I'm doing well. I laughed out loud when he sketched in the point where I should be concerned. It is the dashed line that he labeled sweatpants. So when it seems like changing out of my sweatpants is too much, I've hit that point. Thinking about it now, when I was at that point, I often spent days in the same clothes and thought I was still doing okay because I would change my underclothes. It is amazing how you can't see issues when you are in the middle of them. But I'm not there anymore. Things are much better now.

That's why days like yesterday are so incredibly frustrating. Since Wednesday, Lauren has been taking short naps and waking up periodically at night. She's making her teething noise and it looks like an eye tooth is trying to erupt into this world, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that when she doesn't get her sleep, neither do I. I hate that my mood seems to be so dependent on the amount of sleep that I get, but that is the building block for functioning for the rest of the day. 

On Thursday night, Lauren was up and crying from 12:30am to 3:30am. There were times when I felt like it was no problem, times when I wanted to just tell her to zip it and times when I started to get scared that I might be a little rough if she didn't stop crying. Of course, I made it through without injuring her but the mommy guilt for the split second that you envision yourself just dumping her in her crib and hightailing it out of there to put in your earplugs hits hard. That, coupled with the limited night's sleep, made me feel like I was right back where I started. Of course I know I'm not, but it is scary that it could be so easy to slip back there. I guess the difference now is that I see it and I see it for what it is. It isn't me and it is not the way that I'll be forever. But on Friday, that was where I was. 

On blue days I know that I need to be gentle with myself. If I need to have to nap, so be it. If there are decisions that need to be made that I can't do, they can be made another day. But the most important thing is that I don't give into the feelings to shut myself off, close myself down and disappear from my life. Because my life is so beautiful. There are so many things that I will enjoy if I'm just gentle with myself and give myself the time that I need to see them clearly again.