Nirvana

I have been listening to a lot of Nirvana lately. It has been making me sad. Poor Kurt, he was so fricken fucked up. He is the poster boy for depression. Lithium is like the depression anthem. God, Smells Like Teen Spirit, I cannot help but be sent right to where I was when I first heard that song. We were at Jaime Whitney's house, up in her room and we just listened to it over and over and over and over again. We were dancing like freaks. It makes me feel happy and sad for young kristen. I had no idea the song would still move me so deeply 15 years later. That the song would still be so important.

I have been having a pretty good week.
I almost went a full week without crying. Then I cried in yoga on Friday cause it was too hard :(
But a whole week without tears? Shit - the meds are finally starting to do their job.
I sent this weird group email a few minutes ago ( i kinda want to undo):

Please excuse the group email:

I wanted to write this note, to some of the important people in my life, as a little explanation.
I have been battling severe PP depression for the last year. It started 4 months after Elias was born. I feel like I really hit rock bottom around his 1st birthday and the first few months of this year have been incredibly difficult.
I have not been responding to emails, or phone calls, or anything for that matter. I hope you can understand why. It has been hard for me to function.

I have been feeling much better for the last week. A combination of therapy and medication seems to have finally brought some relief.
I have been embarrassed of this affliction. But I am trying hard to overcome that. It sucks so hard and I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I am not ashamed. I have done the very best I could under the crumby circumstances. But with me being so far away it is easy to hide, but I wouldn't hide if I had a broken leg, right? I just happen to have a broken brain right now.

that's it.

It feels good to have written it and to believe that everything I wrote is true.

Markers and Milestones

Tomorrow is my last day at the hospital. This last month has seemed so long and simultaneously so short.
I don't feel like I am the same hopelessly morose girl that checked in, but it seems like it was just a few days ago that I was hourly, if not minutely, trying to talk myself out of the Bell Jar.

Also middle March will mark a full year of the depression. It was really shitty from end of November until I went in to the hospital. I really didn't think I was going to make it. It sounds so dramatic, but suicide really seemed like the only option for many of those black days. I was in so much pain. Since then I have had probably 10 days of "good days" in the last month. 1o whole days of just passive suicidal ideations and not full on planning and sending out goodbye letters to friends. They keep telling me this is the road to recovery. Of course I will still have bad days (Friday to Monday were very ugly) but they will be less and less and permeated by good days.

The hospital was miraculous for being able to push my meds to a therapeutic level in a much shorter time than Dr. Liz ever felt comfortable to do with me alone. It would have taken her weeks to triage me up to the same levels that I was able to do in a couple of days at the PHP.

We hired a wonderful babysitter. Kelly has been a god sent. She is working about 30 hours a week. Now that my stint in the hospital is coming to a close, I am going to have to find something else with which to structure my time - a part-time job, a class, who knows?!

I have lifted my self-imposed "do not allow kristen to be alone with the baby" rule. I feel so much safer for everyone else involved.
I am trying to limit my self-judgement and self prophesying catastrophic thinking.
I am hoping I learned enough over this last month and year to avoid every letting myself get that bad again.
Also drugs are not bad. I am currently still taking 4 different meds. So they are helping a lot.