Welcome to My Dark Side
On the loss of identity that comes with motherhood.
How do you write when it feels like everything is sucked out of your soul? How do you pour out something meaningful when you don’t even know what meaning is anymore?
Welcome to my dark side.
I wear a few hats: mother, soul-mate, newbie blogger, ex-wife, lost dreamer.
But where is the hat that is just meant for me, Valerie?
It’s buried somewhere beneath the dirty diapers and piles of soiled clothes.
It’s stained with melted popsicles and torn at the seams.
It smells of dog piss.
How can I unbury and mend it while I’m stuck in an endless cycle of complaints and needs? Is it even salvageable anymore?
Bubble baths help, if there is enough hot water left at the end of the day. As though foamy Unicorn bath bombs can fizz away at the layers of callous on my soul.
Sometimes I try to paint my face during nap time, covering the dark circles that prove how gone I am. Until I open my eyeshadow palette and find that the cheery colors have been crushed and smeared into ugly gray oblivion.
Cigarettes become my facade of self-care. Each draw of deathly chemicals is too fleeting. My mother asks why I do this to myself. “I’m going to quit before I’m 30,” I reply. As though in six short months, I will stop needing their companionship.
When a rare moment of escape appears, how can I run away from my cave and pretend I belong anywhere else?
“Talk to us,” they plea. Distant family members and friends who have lost me to this monster. They don’t really want to hear me. They don’t want to hear about darkness and chaos. I don’t blame them. Who would?
Why would I spend the precious pennies of myself — all that I’ve managed to scrape up — on phone calls that end in fake optimism and make me feel more alone than I already felt?
“Go see a therapist,” I’m told. When? At 10pm when I’m no longer needed?
“Make some friends.” How? Who in this town of scholars, drug addicts, and self-righteous neighbors would find benefit in the company of a shell of a person who once was? What do I have to offer to them, anyway?
“You’re going to miss this.” Sure I will, but why the fuck do you think that will comfort me right now?
For me, motherhood and depression are knitted together at the seams of my identity. They are one in the same. One does not exist without the other.
I sure wish that wasn’t the case. It would be great if smiles and sunshine were the root of my being. If I had to kill for that opportunity, I might consider it.
For now, there is writing. Throwing the chaos onto paper and being seen by strangers for who I really am is a little liberating. But it only gets you so far. Especially if you can’t figure out what the hell to write.
So, here is my latest contribution. Take from me what you will.
Because today, this is all that’s left.
Note: My life is not always this bleak. You caught me on a bad day. I plan to write more about mental illness. But I also have brighter revelations in store.
