DOOM

I am happy.

I am exhausted and scatterbrained and stressed out, but I'm happy. I have to honestly say for the first time in my life.

I have to say that the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" feeling has been relegated to the backseat of my mind, which I think is probably part of the definition of true happiness.

But I'm also terrified. TERRIFIED. I'm terrified of Postpartum Depression. I'm not terrified of not being a good mom, or of not being able to take care of the baby, or even of labor pains, I'm fairly sure that I can handle all of that.

My fear of Postpartum Depression is probably because apparently, I'm DOOMED to a group of folks with a higher incidence of PPD due to past depression.

If you've been reading, you know I have survived PTSD related depression. According to my medical record, it's been in remission since 2006. I'm afraid to go back. That was the darkest period of my life. I didn't care about myself, I didn't care about anyone else, I was wholly unempathetic to anyone else's feelings because mine were so painful. I couldn't see past it. I was suicidal, I was self-harming, I was drunk all the time, and I was numb to anything but momentary desperation, and anxiety that strangled me most of the time. When I wasn't having nightmares I could sleep, but most of the time I would wake up nauseated or choking from panic.

But the depression was worse than all of that. Panic attacks I can handle. Anxiety I've had since I was young, I know how to cope. But depression was new. I was ill equipped to handle the tears and the self-loathing and the acting out.

I have never been so unhappy in my life as when I was depressed. And I never cried out of sadness. I cried out of frustration, anger, self-pity. But never sadness. I wasn't a likeable person. I didn't like me, I couldn't imagine anyone else could either.

Cut to me moving out here, and I experienced that crying from sadness that I had never experienced, and as much as I hated it, it was uncontrollable and cathartic. I started doing serious trauma work, I cried a lot from sadness, from grief, from the loss of family relationships that I never had. I did work that was painful, and I looked at and talked about things I didn't want to look at and talk about.

And the depression lifted. I won't say the journey was easy. It wasn't. There was a time that I sat outside my Monrovia apartment, chain smoking and listening to Joyful Girl by Ani Difranco on repeat just to keep from driving my car into a tree and that isn't an exaggeration. Sometimes I just drove. I drove to Studio City and went in circles, I drove up the hill behind my house and back and forth. I was by myself, and I only knew the people I worked with until my ex-husband moved out here. And by the time he got here, I knew I couldn't stay married to him. I made huge changes in my life to get away from the things in my life that depressed me, that stifled me, that made me not value life, even my own enough to make me want to end it.

And I know, I am fully aware that I have done massive amounts of work to get to where I don't think that will come back. I am in a healthy relationship, I have gotten away from my negative coping skills, and the fact that I physically cannot drink right now and don't really feel like acting out (I'm tired, ya'll), has really made me realize that I am capable of being healthy.  I can make healthy choices and I don't think that I will fall back into those behaviors.

I am still so afraid of getting depressed again. And doctor's LOVE to look at my medical history and say "Well, you have a history of trauma and studies show that women who have a history of trauma and depression are more likely to have PPD."

Fuck off, is that something I need to hear? I don't know that they realize that this is the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I've been happy. Ever. So maybe it won't happen, because I'm healthy now? No? Or is it just that the general thought pattern is that most trauma survivors DON'T get the help they need, and continue to live in somewhat unhealthy ways, so they would obviously continue to manifest symptoms? Could it be that in those cases of "more likely" it's not postpartum depression, it's just depression that never got treated correctly and has a recurrence?

I can honestly say medication didn't really do me any good. The only med I took (and I tried a lot of meds) that did anything was Wellbutrin, and it didn't for very long. The only thing that worked for me was therapy, distance, and a complete life overhaul. I got off the daily meds, and I was actually BETTER than I was when I was on them.  That is to say I don't think my depression was caused by faulty brain chemistry, and I don't think a lot of cases of depression are caused by faulty brain chemistry.

All of this is to say the faulty logic I think lies in that people view depression as something you can't come back from, and then they aggressively petition unsuspecting pregnant women (or suspecting in my case, I work in mental health) to "be on the look out," "don't wait." I'm all about vigilance but jesus, can I just be blissful for the first time in my life and not be freaked out about falling into that black hole again?

I can't wait to meet my baby. And I'm really just not ok with any more dark clouds over my head. They've been gone for a while and I'm not interested in letting other people try to bring them back. If I get PPD, ok, I'll get treatment. But I'm not going to lie in wait.