Down the stream

For a while now one of W’s favorite songs has been ‘Row, row, row your boat‘. As “we” sing it I hold on to his little hands and row him forwards and back. As he goes back he is stoic and quiet, but as he is pulled forward his face breaks out into one of his patented zillion teeth grins and he squawks like a parrot in paradise.

If he wakes up in the middle of the night he sometimes does a small cry which gets me up and I roll over to check in on him via the video monitor (a prop leftover from the days when I used to watch Grandmother stir in the night). Some nights he just thunks back down into the child’s pose and drifts sweetly off to sleep, and some nights he can not be consoled and will hoist himself up and thwack at the corners of his pack and play until I come in and settle him back down.

And then there are the nights where he wakes up and sits in the middle of his sleep zone and begins to rock to and fro. I’ve begun to wonder if this is a barely awake attempt at soothing himself down with something that makes him happy. Rocking back and forth, and back and forth, sometimes humming, sometimes just creaking the mattress against the metal support rods of the pack and play. And eventually he will slow down and slide into sleep.

I share all of this because this morning as I went through the motions of row, row after his two (!) morning bottles I began to weep a bit inside. The song just took on a weird meaning for me.

Weeping on the inside is something that may not be familiar to people that don’t wade and navigate through the rough terrain of depression. Sometimes just the act of crying is exhausting and it always cracks open the clay pot vessel of yourself that you have carefully molded to embody the mantra of, “I’m just fine, thank you for asking”.

And so you learn to cry on the inside. Your fingertips become cool with sadness, your breathing changes, you try to just focus on one task at a time because multitasking is not going to get you through. Nothing can get you through but time. And sometimes there is just not enough time in the day. So you go to bed, or at least attempt to, with the residue of sadness wafting around you like the chemical smell of Noxzema. The sadness pushes through your dreams, raises your internal thermostat, and robs you of any moment of true rest.

Most of the brunt force of my depression is under control thanks to medication and solid friendships. It is like one of those electronic paperweights that were so popular in the mid 90′s. Those plastic rectangles filled with blue gel that rise up and down creating undulating waves like new-age lava lamps. Blue gel is much better than a tidal wave.

This past week was pretty hard for me, for several reasons. Some I can write about, some are totally unbloggable. But I am really trying to push through this moment to break the surface of this sad. I have so many wonderful things to look forward to in the coming days so there is a beautiful light to reach towards.

But right now I am down the stream and life is not a dream.

Tagged as: depression