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My Struggle, July 2002
My name is Sharon. I am 27 years old and am going through one of the hardest times of my life right now. It is really hard for me to talk about my feelings and myself so I am going to try to write it down, although I am finding it hard to even think about doing it this way.
I found myself here because of post partum depression. My children are Alisa, who’s 4 1/2; Kevin, who’s 22 months; and Abbey who’s 8 months. All three kids were C-sections. After Abbey was born, I was totally overwhelmed. I was exhausted and felt so totally alone. I wasn’t supposed to have Abbey. I was going to have my tubes tied when Kev was born but it didn’t happen because he was premature and the doctor who delivered him and wouldn’t tie my tubes because she was worried that I would regret it if he wasn’t ok. Honestly, I was ok with that because I had always wanted at least 3 kids anyway. But my pregnancies were so hard and my health was not very good to start with anyway. I needed a lot of help to take care of the one kid I had at that point. So, no one in my family wanted me to even consider getting pregnant again after I had my second one. When Kev came, I way definitely not supposed to get pregnant again, especially not so soon.
Kev was born Aug 21, 2000. He was 8 weeks early. I was emotionally prepared for that because my oldest Alisa had also been a preemie. He did really well even though he was small, 4 pounds 3 oz. He spent 3 weeks in the hospital in NICU. At the end of Oct, I went into the hospital to have my gallbladder out and have surgery done on my stomach and ended up staying in for 2 1/2 weeks with pancreatitis. Then, Kev got a respiratory infection and ended up back in the hospital Thanksgiving week. Alisa was turning 3 on Dec 7 and the day before her birthday I got put back in the hospital with the pancreatitis and was there for six weeks. I must have gotten pregnant with Abbey the day I got out of the hospital.
My pregnancy with Abbey was actually a little better than my others, I only had to stay on the iv feeding with an iv line in my chest for part of the pregnancy instead of the whole time like with my other two. But I hid my pregnancy from my family, except for my hubby, Kevin, until I was past the stage where I felt that they would pressure me the abort the pregnancy. My mom and grandma and the rest of my family still think I learned that I was pregnant when I was approximately 18 weeks along but I knew long before that. I was already barfing at, like, 3 weeks, and I knew then. I didn’t tell anyone but a couple close friends and I talked to a counselor, but I waited so I would not be pressured to do something I knew I couldn't live with. My husband really would have liked for me to have an abortion too, but he never once even said the word or pressured me to do something that he knew that I couldn’t do.
Abbey was born on Oct 22, 2001, 14 months and 1 day younger than Kev. I think that I felt a lot more pressure that Abbey has been “my” baby because I am the one who wanted her more than anything and even though I know that now that she's here that everyone else loves her more than anything, she still feels more mine somehow, like I’m somehow more responsible for her, and that I should be able to handle he being here better than I have. I feel so guilty sometimes because she is the baby that I wanted so badly, my second girl that I prayed for that would make my perfect family and then she came and everything felt like it fell apart. I felt like I fell apart. Here was this beautiful perfect little baby that I wanted so much and I couldn’t cope at all. I was sad all the time I was crying all the time, I was yelling all the time. I was getting mad at my other kids all the time. I couldn’t enjoy my baby. I hated myself. I hated my kids. I hated my life. I hated everything and everyone. There were times that I just couldn’t stand to be around my kids. More than anything, I was so totally alone. I couldn’t deal with what I was feeling. This wasn’t how I was “supposed to” be feeling right after I had this wonderful little baby. And when I was overwhelmed and crying and needing help or whatever people in my family would say things to me like, “well you are the one who wanted all these kids anyway”. Things like that even though they only got said once or twice sunk into my head and made me feel so alone in what I was going through. I was wrong to be feeling like I was and I had to just find a way to pull myself together and cope with my life but the more I tried to ignore what I was feeling the worse things got, and the closer and closer I got to a crisis.
My family had a hard time realizing just how bad I was getting and I was just too lost in my pain to even be able to attempt to tell them. Some of the things that I was thinking and feeling were just too wrong for me to ever be able to voice them to anyone. Part of the problem was that for most of my life I have had a serious chronic illness and my mom and my husband have seen me so sick so often, and with my physical problems my mood had fluctuated sometimes too. They were unsure exactly what was going on with me. So many times before, I had gone through a surgery and had been moody for a while afterward until I had a chance to bounce back from what my body had been through. After Kev had been born, I had gotten depressed and extremely irritable but I had gone on Zoloft that my regular doctor had given me and I had been fine within a couple weeks. After I had Abbey, I went back on the Zoloft right away but it didn’t help like it did before, and I was falling apart so quickly, but even though I felt like I was screaming for help no one seemed to be hearing me. I guess that I was only screaming on the inside.
One day when Abbey was a few months old, I was trying to get Kev to go to sleep without much success. He kept fighting me and pulling my hair. I got so frustrated and got to the point where I was like, “here if you want my hair so much” and I pulled out a big bunch. I just kept crying and pulling put my hair. I felt like I was going to totally lose control so I put Kev in his crib and went outside and sat on the step and cried and pulled out my hair. My husband found me out there crying and I told him to just get the kids away from me. He called my mom and took them to her house. A couple days, later I hacked off what was left of my long hair in another hysterical rage. That same week, I also cut myself for the first time. My family took what was going on more seriously and helped me more with the kids but I didn’t get much more professional help. I did go to my therapist after I pulled out my hair and cut and she knew that I had done it but she didn’t push me very much about it or about how I was really doing, and my family had no contact with her. In the next few weeks, I kept functioning, I started avoiding going to the therapist because I couldn’t talk to her anyway. I started to cut more regularly. I felt numb most of the time. It was like I had turned off all of my feelings and they only crept out once in a while in a burst of emotion that to me felt out of control. I hated that. I hated to feel out of control. I hated to feel the bad feelings; the things I was feeling were wrong so I cut. I cut because I deserved it. I cut so I wouldn’t feel. I cut to keep control of myself. I cut to focus my anger so that it wouldn’t explode outward.
By February, I felt like my life had spun totally out of control, I wasn’t going to my therapist anymore. I was cutting every day and was becoming an expert at hiding it. There was a time I cut my feet and ankles and calves for a week or two so I could walk around in only knee socks in front of my husband so he wouldn’t suspect that I had cut because I wasn’t changing my clothes in front of him. My first aid skills became expert, and I could close most cuts, even some that should have had stitches without anyone ever having to know that I had cut. But my cutting was getting was worse and worse, and I knew I was getting into dangerous territory but I wasn’t sure that I cared and I was sure that I knew enough to not cut in the wrong spot, and I wasn’t suicidal. I spent most of my time acting like I was ok, but I was so far from ok that I was terrified.
I had this overwhelming desire to run away from my life and one day in late February, I finally had enough and I did it. I just took off. I left. I took money from my grandma that I was supposed to use to pay bills with because my husband had been out of work since Sept and I bought plane tickets for the kids and me and called a cab, went to the airport and flew to Ohio. I had friends meet me there. I left a note for Kevin saying I loved him and I was sorry, he told me our apartment looked like I’d ransacked it when I had left. I had cut really badly before I had gone, several of the spots probably should have been stitched but I was able to close fairly well myself. My mom and Kevin figured out quickly where I had gone and called out there. They left that night to come out to get us, or at least to take the kids home. I agreed to go home with them but I was so incredibly angry with them for thinking that I would have traumatized the kids in any way. The kids were fine and Alisa was actually mad that she had to leave and couldn’t stay and play with my friend’s daughter more. Any emotional strength that I had left disappeared that day.
When we finally got home, my kids went to my mom’s house and I went back to my apartment. I got an appointment with my psychiatrist and therapist in a few days. The days between when I got home and when I went in for that appointment are a total blur, I don’t remember them at all. I don’t know if I was alone at all. I don’t know if I cut more. I do remember going to the appointment, or Kevin making me go to the appointment. I guessed that I was going to be hospitalized so I had packed. Both the psychiatrist and my therapist were at the appointment. I spent the visit curled up in Kevin’s lap. I couldn’t even manage to talk to them. Kevin forced me to show them where I had cut. I shook my head yes or no to answer questions, but I was later told that I was otherwise almost mute. I was admitted to the hospital from there.
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The unexamined life is not worth living
-Socrates
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"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
-Frank Herbert, Dune, "Litany Against Fear", 1965
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