I wrote this in the grips of a very bad day. RB has been going through a sleep regression so neither of us have been sleeping, and my patience is thin, which means the days that would be just regular old bad days feel like really, really shit days. I really debated on publishing this. This is what life is though, isn't it? It's bad days, it's good days, and it's all the days in between. This shit is hard. The whole thing - being a mom, being a partner, being an employee, being a friend, being a daughter, the whole thing is hard sometimes. The weight we bear crashes down and sometimes crashes out. I'm choosing to share this because it's real, and it was what I was feeling. Be forewarned, there is an abnormal amount of cursing in what follows.
Today, I am not having a good day. It's actually not a stretch to say I'm having a bad day or even a shitty day. It seems like I'm having lots of shitty days lately. It's really nobody's fault but my own. I'm pretty sure I don't have postpartum depression, but I'm pretty positive I have postpartum rage.
This is a thing that I read about on the internet, obviously I haven't talked to a doctor about it, because that would make too much sense. But apparently a lot of women deal with this after they give birth. Maybe it's postpartum depression presenting as rage. I don't fucking know. What I do know is that I'm pretty annoyed with the world all the time. There's no real reason for me to be mad. There's a whole lot of reasons for me to be happy. But for some reason, in this season of my life, I'm just fucking pissed off. And really, I want to sit down and cry. Shit, maybe I am depressed.
Whenever I feel too many emotions, I cry. I've talked about this in my blog before. I'm definitely a crier. Some people don't ever cry and some people cry all the time. I lean more towards the latter end of the scale. I remember when I used to be able to cry at my own fucking leisure. I used to be able to take to a bed for a day or two, feel like shit, wallow in my own self-pity. Used to be able to take time to process my own fucking feelings. That's no longer something I get to do. And it's not really motherhood that prevents me from doing that, at least not solely, but it's more just life in general. When I used to be able to feel like shit just for the sake of feeling like shit, I didn't have responsibilities. I mean I had responsibilities, but the responsibilities I have today are nowhere near the responsibilities that I had been. It's almost embarrassing to think that I used to get stressed about things. I mean before our lives became full blown adulthood. I guess motherhood does keep me from wallowing in my own self-pity.
I really don't want RB to grow up to feel like I do. I mean he's never birth to have a baby (you know the whole lack of ovaries, that'll do it) so he's never going to have to deal with this hormonal shift that I'm going through. And before you say "It's been 8 months, Grace, your hormones have shifted already, you're all evened out" - you're wrong. And also, piss off. (Whoops, there's that rage again.)
Anyway, I recently stopped breastfeeding, or, well, exclusively pumping (against my will, might I add). I spent a lot of time, a lot of late night pumps, dreaming about the day that I would be done, when my body would again be my own. I'd be able to have a drink after work or eat whatever I wanted. I always thought it would be my choice. Or I thought, I don't know, that we'd hit the year mark, and RB would be eating solids, and I feel good about how far we came. I didn't get to do that.
My body was ravaged by what is probably poisonous mayonnaise in the state of Louisiana, and my breastfeeding journey came to an abrupt end. My milk dried up during the time that I was dehydrated and it did not come back. RB is now on formula, and I'm here resenting my body and my weak ass stomach lining. This is beside the point. The real point I'm trying to make, well, is that when you stop breastfeeding, you go through a huge hormonal shift. I am currently in the fucking depths of this right now. Like I am wrestling this hormonal fucking beast every day and that beast is me. I guess it makes sense. How could your body produce milk and keep a whole other human alive on the outside of it without having to pull the e-brake on your hormones to do that?
It sucks that I did not get to wean over time. I'm sure it could have done a better job, as I could with most things (sorry, also very angry with myself right now, probably angriest with anybody). Anyway, I could have weaned slower. I could have pumped harder and I could have put more effort into it. I could have. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But I didn't. Instead, I just accepted my fate and that my journey was over. Accepted, not grieved - probably an important distinction to make.
My hormones are so fucking out of fucking whack right now that I am a fucking basket case. Like if a basket weaver wove a bunch of beautiful baskets and then put them in a wooden crate and probably put a bunch of cobras in there and shook it up, that's the fucking basketcase that I am right now. Maybe not all the time. I mean, I am coming off the heels of a bad day, so I'm probably being a little dramatic, which is pretty typical for me. Yeah. I feel like a fucking crazy person right now. And I think people around me think I'm a fucking crazy person.
I just had to get this out of my fucking head. In case you can't tell, when I am feeling anything but happy, my go-to word is the F word. I won't apologize for it. It's who I am, and it's who I've been for a long fucking time.
Well, thanks for listening. I'm done here. Tomorrow is a new day. For now, I'm going to take this body that can now consume alcohol freely without the worry of consequence and I'm going to go have a fucking white claw. The end.
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