State of Mind

Life isn't one thing after another; it's the same damn thing over and over.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't know why (not true; more on that later) but I continue to let a particular incident sniggle at me. I continue to be hurt by the fact that someone I don't know and have never met finds me ridiculous -- and not in a charming, "Oh, isn't she funny! What a great sense of humor!" kind of way. No, she finds me worthy of ridicule. That stings a little more than simple dislike, for some reason.

Her opinion shouldn't matter to me. We've never met and likely never will. I couldn't pick her out of a lineup. I don't admire her or aspire to be like her in any way (which is nothing personal; aside from her remarks about me and the name of the street she lives on, I know next to nothing about her). She holds no influence with people I care about.

But still. Ouch.

Every time I think about it (embarrassingly, stupidly often) I feel freshly humiliated. I dredge up old insecurities that have lain dormant since my early 20s. I fall into bad habits and a spiral of negative mental chatter. Add a tragedy to get my morbid emotions stewing and I worry I'm on my way to being depressed.

I'm on the lookout because I've been there before, and it isn't pretty. It isn't tragically romantic; it isn't lying in bed all day in a silk robe while the world goes on around you; it isn't waiting with a heavy heart for some doe-eyed lover to save you from your sadness. Clinical depression is the ugly cry and irrational outbursts; it is raw and angry and mean; it is days without food; it is an incessant prayer for annihilation. Nearly everyone leaves you, and you push away those who don't with whatever force you can muster until you are completely alone.

I'm not there, don't worry. Not even a little bit. But the fact that I've let an incident so small completely overtake my interior life concerns me. I've been through this before (which means I'm vulnerable to relapse). I know that it can begin as small as this and snowball if I'm not vigilant.

I didn't used to be so thin skinned. I felt very brittle after my first (let's hope only) bout of depression -- like a shattered ceramic vase put back together with scotch tape -- but when I came back to myself, I came back awesome: Confident and strong (and still a little neurotic, because hey, spiders really are gross and potentially life-threatening, and the phone really is the worst of modern inventions -- ask anyone in my family). Quirks aside, I was independent and adventurous and I had the courage of my convictions; I no longer cared what anybody else thought. I rocked the house.

What changed? Honestly, motherhood. (Is that awful to admit? It is, isn't it?)

I was a good mom of one: I doted; I cooed; I beamed. Every moment was a learning opportunity seized. Someone told me that, through motherhood, I had "blossomed" -- and while that sounded really incredibly cheesy even at the time, I took the compliment to heart. I believed it. I thought, "Wow, so this is what I was meant for!" I wanted more, more, more! A whole fun brood of closely spaced kids, just like the family I had grown up in.

And then we had Dos. She and Uno are precisely 18 months and 2 weeks apart, which didn't seem too awfully close to me at the time. My mom had the first three of her eight children in slightly less than three years (Irish Triplets!) and she made it seem absolutely effortless. She and I are a lot alike, I thought, so why wouldn't I excel at this mothering business like she had? But I found out the hard way that I am not my mother.

The transition from one to two -- the sleep deprivation, the delicate negotiation of simultaneous needs, the isolation, the hormones that hadn't quite settled after the first pregnancy ramping up, then dropping again -- overwhelmed me. My nerves frayed until they were completely exposed. I was tightrope walking on barbed wire. As the girls got older and more independent, that feeling faded ... but I've never regained the confidence I had from my mid 20s on, the confidence I had when it was just me and Uno. I am not a puddle of maternal goo. I am not an energetic guide on the learning highway of life. I am not the mother I had, nor the one I wanted to be.

It doesn't help that Uno has entered that charming phase in which every discipline or simple request is met with a stomp and a squeal: "You're the worst mother EVER! Daddy is much more nicer than you!" I know she doesn't mean it. I know it's just a stage she'll pass through on her way to other, more exciting outbursts, lol. I remember saying similar things to my own mom at that age, and we're about as close as can be.

But still. Ouch.

Uno's fits sniggle at my deepest fears. Random Lady Who Doesn't Like Me exacerbates the problem. I've already come to terms with the fact that I am not a unique and special butterfly -- my life is a total cliché (which amuses more than bothers me) and my talents, while I have and enjoy them, will never rise much above pleasant mediocrity. That's fine, because I was meant for something bigger: The noble job of motherhood!

...Problem is, I'm not very good at it, this most important of important jobs. If I'm not a very good mother, I must not be a very good person and thus everything Random Lady says must be true and certainly what Uno says must be because she's down here in the trenches with me, she sees me how I really am when nobody else is around, and slowly the mental chatter escalates and the onion peels and my proverbial skin gets thinner and thinner until....

And this is where I have to put my foot down. I have responsibilities. I can't do this again.

*Sigh.*

I suppose I'm just asking for criticism with posts so confessional, with such (let's be honest) patently ridiculous idiosyncrasies celebrated as if they were cute.... I shouldn't be surprised when strangers think I'm weird.

But in any case, I need to stop caring.


~RCH~