Joy out of the darkness

It is like those years happened in another lifetime. To another person. Yet, I distinctly remember when I was living through those years, thinking, will this never end? It'll be easier, I said to myself, when I was no longer in pain from the birth, when he sleeps through the night, when I stop breastfeeding, when he becomes a toddler. But each stage brought different challenges. Just when you thought you were getting on top of a particular stage, it all changed, all over again. And your world became a different sort of chaotic.

My world was very small during those early years. In fact, when I look back, I can see myself in our old lounge. Never the kitchen, the garden or my bedroom. Just in the lounge. My world was very tiny indeed.

I now see pictures of my friends online taking their baby into London or a farm, out and about, having adventures. I feel envy. Not an ugly envy but an admiring envy. The furthest I went with my baby was a walk into my local town. The first time I got back home from this short walk I was in terrific pain and in tears. I poured myself a glass of water in the kitchen, took some painkillers, changed the baby's nappy and walked back into the lounge. Into the darkness. And that's where I stayed for months.

It was on this same walk, many many months later, when it occurred to me that what I was feeling wasn't normal. Two words were whispered into my ear. I can still see exactly where I was stood with the Mamas & Papas pram. On the left hand side of the busy road, waiting for a break in the traffic to cross. I don't remember much at all from those months and year but I do remember this.

Postnatal depression.

Those were the two words. I don't know where they came from. I hadn't seen a programme about it, I hadn't read about it, hadn't really heard about it; except for a questionnaire the health visitor had read out to me in the baby weighing clinic months before (I lied in answer to all the questions; utterly terrified they would think me a bad mum if I replied negatively to any of them). It wasn't talked about. It certainly wasn't in any baby book I'd read, or in any baby magazine.

I continued my walk into town. Feeling a little lighter. Despite not knowing whether this was what I had, or what the symptoms were, I thought there might be an explanation for how I was feeling. That I wasn't failing as a mother. That I wasn't a bad mother. I tried not to listen to another voice whispering in my ear that this was an easy excuse for being so rubbish at caring for my son.

Returning home I fired up the computer. I did a search on those two words. There was a checklist. Good, I liked checklists.

‘Do you choose to stay at home and avoid social situations?’ Er, yes.

'Do you fear health professionals in case you are criticised with how you are raising your baby?’ Doesn't everyone?

The questions continued. The majority of them I said yes to.

The relief I felt that I wasn't a bad mother outweighed any guilt I had about succumbing to depression. (Yes, that's right I did feel guilt for being depressed. This guilt didn't last.)

With help, with realisation, with the ability to talk about what I was going through, I extended my world. I took tentative steps out of the lounge, started to try new things like a baby swimming class, made new friends. Not every day was sunny. But the darkness was receding.

Tomorrow my son, my first born, turns thirteen. He's five foot ten to my five foot six. He's strong (oh my goodness the guilt I felt about giving up breastfeeding at three months) and broad. His feet are bigger than his dad's. He's polite, good company and a real joy to be around.

There was a time when I felt cheated. When my mind was better and I realised all that I'd missed out on. I don't feel that now. Because, since then, we've made a lifetime (for him) of more memories. Time does heal. And your baby grows up. But he's still my baby. My joy. And I'm so happy he came along.

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Too many emotions

"There's going to be a nuclear war," my friend looked at me, his eyes wide and sincere. "This will escalate, honest. We need to be prepared." I looked at my friend in horror. A friend I admired and respected. My stomach lurched and a knot of apprehension started to swell and grow. A seed of worry, planted there by the media, becoming fertilised and nourished by that one sentence.

I felt a dark cloud settle on me that day. It was the 1990s. A few months before I'd come out of a long-term relationship, been involved in a car crash, and taken my finals at university. All at the same time. It's fair to say I was a little vulnerable.

And now this. I think it was the break up of Yugoslavia. Or it could have been the Gulf War. It might have been neither.

Thank God then there was no such thing as social media.

Fast forward to 2016. When a tragedy occurs, or a major event that shocks the entire country happens, those who use social media turn to it for solace. They express their shock, their anger, their grief. It all comes spilling out. A stream of consciousness, a fast river of emotions.

To see them, amplified, by seemingly millions of voices, millions of thoughts exiting urgently out of my phone into my (limited) head space, it's too much. Especially when I'm still in recovery mode.

I have to back off. I have to tear myself away and, temporarily, I delete facebook from my phone. I mute (temporarily) voices on my twitter feed.

Their thoughts and emotions make me anxious. It is affecting my own thoughts and emotions. It is overtaking my own thoughts and emotions.

I am taking in millions of people's thoughts and emotions.

Can't. Breathe.

Whispers of a dark cloud start to form in my head.

So I turn, instead, to writing. I turn to real-life friendships, dog walks and baking. I would turn to gardening, too, but the rain is thwarting that.

I love social media. It is responsible for a lot of good that has happened to me in the last decade. But I make no apologies for backing off from it when it becomes too much.

And incidentally this is not, in any way, a complaint about people tweeting about their emotions. People have every right to do that.

However. My own mental health requires me to step back.

When it stops raining, do come and join me in the garden. I'll provide the cake.