Testing the Limits of Unconditional Love

Noah broke the TiVo.

No, that's not fair. I cannot even use the word "the" when talking about TiVo. TiVo is not a "the." TiVo is a member of the family. And Noah BROKE HIM.

So Noah pushed TiVo off our carefully-arranged Pile o' Electronic Crap, along with our printer, and there was a tremendous crash that roused me from my gin-soaked reverie on the couch, where I spend my days in a powder-blue kimono, plotting to seduce various millionaires while Noah scrubs the stairs, and then I perfected the Miss Hannigan tableau by shrieking at the top of my lungs because TIVO! TIIIIIVOOOOOOOOO! and then I dove over the entertainment unit to pull TiVo up into my loving arms, where I gently cradled him as I watched his green light flicker a few times before dying. In the end, it was peaceful. I like to think he didn't suffer.

(By the way, the extent of my coping skills involve emailing everybody I know in all caps and then calling Jason and demanding that he COME HOME, THIS INSTANT, OR WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.)

We called a few repair places and were told that TiVos just aren't worth fixing unless you can do it yourself. 17 different screwdrivers and one rant about the wasteful, throwaway society we live in later, we figured that we either needed to go buy a new screwdriver or a new TiVo.

The hardware store was closed. So.

(Ooooh. Ahhhh!)

The fact that I can now record TWO SHOWS AT ONCE does help soothe the pain of losing an entire season of Project Runway and about 17 reruns of House.

(WE'VE STILL GOT OUR PRIORITIES, PEOPLE.)

Noah is thinking about what he's done.

It's the urban equivalent to having a car up on cinderblocks on your front lawn, I think.

This, however, is just pure country, no matter where you live.

Beachy

This past weekend we continued our Summer of Beach House Mooching and spent a few days in Ocean City with Jason's family. I am now home with a child so far off his schedule that it feels like we've returned to those fuzzy, bewildering newborn days when I never knew what he wanted or what was coming next -- would he scream? or sleep? or scream?  Since we've been back I'm stabbing in the dark once again -- handing him bottles and Cheerios and toys and books and the television remote and then throwing up my hands and telling him that's all I've got, buddy, pick something. You can eat, sleep or stare slack-jawed at the talking picture box. WELCOME TO THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Jason's aunt and uncle are retired and live at the beach year-round. We've had an open invitation to come visit for as long as we've been together -- a good nine years now, but our vacation possibilities were always endless, boundless and selfishly budgetless. Now we're just assholes with a baby. Assholes who are more than willing to dump our asshole selves on anyone who doesn't mind the occasional middle-of-the-night shrieking session, a bazillion toys in their living room, diapers in their powder room wastebasket, and a semi-permanent coating of gummed Cheerios on every surface.

His aunt and uncle did not mind. They also made us waffles every morning. And I realized that all we require in order to get Noah to nap like he has never napped before is 1) a glider rocker, 2) a balcony, and 3) an ocean.

Their condo, built to withstand both hurricanes and Spring Breakers, had so much concrete and steel running through the walls that we had no cell phone reception or wireless Internet. Or DSL. Or dial-up.

There was free high-speed Internet down in the building's lobby, and all weekend Jason and I made noises about hauling our laptops down there, and all weekend we found better things to do. Including sitting on the balcony, staring at the ocean for hours on end, or watching Spongebob Squarepants, or made-for-TV movies which I got waaaay too into and had to turn my head away from my in-laws so they wouldn't see that I was choked up and could probably have a full-on cry over the gorgeous triumph of the human spirit and a straight-talking teacher who WOULD NOT GIVE UP ON YOU KIDS. YOU ARE NOT LOSERS. YOU ARE WINNERS! WINNNNNERS!

Way better than checking email, I'll tell you that.

Jason's parents were there as well, which is always nice to a point, since they would practically pay US to go places by ourselves -- to the beach or shopping or Hooters, whatever, they heard the wings are good and we like chicken, right? -- and leave Noah with them. It was delicious to spend a few hours on the beach without him, although I always got the sense that my mother-in-law used our absence as the perfect opportunity to correct all our parenting mistakes. (babiesdon'tneedextrabottlesofwater itjustisn'tdoneanymore hepees20timesadayalready OMFG) Although that could just be my own raging insecurity talking, like when I saw the little bag of bath toys she'd brought, and I thought what, she doesn't think I can provide my son with adequate damn bath toys or something?

And then I remembered that I actually HAD forgotten to pack bath toys and had just been letting Noah play with some travel-sized shampoo bottles; MY shampoo bottles, by the way, since I'd also forgotten the tear-free baby stuff.

The current obliteration of his schedule aside, I think Noah received excellent care and attention. And it only took six adults to do it.

It didn't help that two of those six adults were complete dorks who went out in public in matching damn shirts.

Mamalamalazyass

Exactly four million earth years ago, I received an email from one Ms. Ayun Halliday, asking if I'd consider participating in one of those blog book tour things that those author kids are so fond of these days. I've gotten similar emails before and have always declined, not because I have anything against the author or the book or the idea of blog book tours or even that they called my incredibly important journal a blawwwg, but because I figured I would probably suck at writing book reviews.

But I agreed to participate in Ayun's. Mostly because I'd heard incredibly good things about the book itself, and also because her email told me to give her a cyber yawp at my earliest convenience if I was interested. Cyber yawp. I liked that. I am easily amused.

And thus I was swayed! On with the suckage!

She also included a long list of cool ideas for the entry -- podcasts! husband-bashing! intellectual discourse between like minds! -- and my choice of dates. And everybody knows when it comes to Picking Your Own Deadline, you pick the one farthest away, because that means it will NEVER EVER COME. August 25th? Are you kidding me? That's like, decades away.

Which is how I ended up here, today, as one of the very last stops on the Mamalamadingdong virtual book tour, feeling like:

1) Everything smart and witty and insightful has already been said by all the other bloggers; and
2) Shit. I probably should have read the book by now, right?

Ha! I am kidding. Sort of.

All month, I carted around a prematurely dog-eared copy of Mamalamadingdong. It went from the coffee table to my nightstand to the diaper bag. It's been to Starbucks, Chipotle and the pediatrician's office. I've read a chapter here and there -- a few stolen pages during Blue's Clues or before falling asleep to dreamily drool on the table of contents. The book has been yanked out of my hands by an impatient semi-toddler and been lost for days at a time in the sofa cushions. (Dear Ayun, Please notice, however, that your book did not get pooped on, which around these parts is an honor reserved only for my Coach bags and perhaps the good china.)

It felt so damn good to read a damn book again that I didn't even really notice when I never unfolded the corner of page 54 and accidentally re-read that chapter three times.

(Honestly, I have read exactly two books since Noah was born, unless you count 7,621 readings of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? or Dukes Tails: Duke Finds a Home, which was a gift from my advertisers and pretty much the best book you'll read this year about a man being buried alive in a silo of beans.)

(SPOILER ALERT! He is totally rescued by his dog.)

(It's actually pretty cute and charming, and Duke is a good dog and he needed a good home and I am NOT SNIFFLING, IT IS DUSTY, GO GET ME SOME BAKED BEANS.)

While this fractured reading style took nothing away from enjoying the book itself -- it's a breezy and oddly-blog-like personal memoir of someone Way Cooler Than You -- it's not really great for someone who needs to Write Things about the book. Especially someone who wants to Write Things that sound smart and cool and avoid stupid fucking adjectives like "breezy."

So I went back to Ayun's original email and all those great ideas that included dumping a fair amount of the work back on her lap. I envisioned a hilarious interview -- me asking her goofy off-the-wall questions and her responses would be smart and well-punctuated enough for me to just cut-and-paste. By the end of the interview, we would be best friends.

Of course, the main problem with this approach was that I needed to think of some goofy off-the-wall questions.

This was the only one I could think of:

Amy: So. Your zine, The East Village Inky, is incredibly hilarious. Yet the words are written very, very small and I have to dig out my reading glasses in order to read it, which makes me feel very, very old, and I want to know if you actually draw and write it that small or if you shrink it down later for printing?

And then maybe I would lean in, all serious-like, as if I were confronting Ashlee Simpson about her nose job, and ask Ayun to come clean about getting LASIK surgery, because seriously. The words are that tiny.

At this point, you may notice that I have not included any smart and well-punctuated responses from Ayun. That is because I again, totally procrastinated and didn't send her any questions, goofy or otherwise, in time before she went out of town this whole week.

It's really unbelievable to think about all the unexpected ways motherhood has changed my life. There's all the obvious ones that people like to whine about -- less sleep, more bodily functions, more plastic crap strewn around your house than you'll ever fully be able to comprehend -- but then there are the changes that you don't even realize have occurred...until you try to read a book about all the unexpected ways motherhood has changed another woman's life and it takes you two fucking months to do so.

At one point in my life I would have read the whole thing in an afternoon and considered it a day well spent . Now I am at a different point in my life, a point where everything is broken up into 15-minute chunks of time, but every 15-minute chunk I devoted to reading Mamalamadingdong I considered to be a chunk well spent.

And I have a feeling Ayun, a fellow mother, would completely understand what a high compliment that actually is.

I Can See the World From Here

For the record, I have no words

to describe what it feels like 

to look at his face,

although I'm not sure

I really need to try.

Murphy's Mom's Law, Or How the Cable Guy Probably Saw Amy Naked

Our cable box blew the fuck up. Poof! Snap! Hiss! No cable! We sat there and stared at a black screen that said "ONE MOMENT PLEASE: this channel will be available shortly." And we waited many moments. And we fiddled with various remotes and cables.

(TIREWATCH 2006: Day 95, in which an angry mob of  various remotes & cables attempt to drive the tire outside)

("TIRE SMASH!" says the tire. "TIRE HUNGRY!")

Anyway, we finally gave up and called the cable company.

The cable company said they'd send a Guy today, between 11 and 2.

SO, BACK THEN:

You email your boss and tell him you have to work from home for part of the day because you have to wait for the Guy.

You get a vague sense that he's irritated with you and then a telepathic shining of your next annual review all chopped to bloody hell in the office hallway, so you scramble and try to explain that you have SO MUCH WORK you can do from home, stuff that you can do BETTER from home, honestly, so working from home is pretty much the best thing you could do right now, super-responsible-employee-wise, and anyway, the Guy will probably get here right at 11 so you'll be in after lunch! That's not bad at all! See you soon, Mr. Best Boss Ever!

And then you sit there. ALL DAY. Until the Guy shows up at like, 3 p.m. And you've long since run out of any work to do, and there's not even any damn TV to watch, and you're hungry because there's no actual food in the house besides mayonnaise and you didn't dare go anywhere for lunch because you were waiting for the damn Guy, and now it's 3:30 and you still feel obligated to drive your ass to work because...I don't know...you've just always been crazy like that.

BUT NOW:

Baby goes down for a nap at 10:30 am. You jump in the shower, incredibly pleased with your incredible scheduling skillz.

Doorbell buzzes at precisely 10:37 am.

Oh. Shit.

You run around naked like a crazy naked banshee looking for clothes -- ANY FOOL ASS CLOTHES -- to throw on in order to answer the door, cursing yourself for not owning a stupid bathrobe, cursing the dog while attempting to administer Dog Whisperer behavior techniques to shut her the hell up, except that you can't remember if you are supposed to leash her, poke her, or simply scream at her like a naked banshee.

You finally grab a pair of your husband's shorts and one of his shirts from the closest laundry pile and answer the door, sopping wet, with shampoo in your eyes, panting and desperately holding the waistband of the too-big shorts that you didn't even take the time to ZIP UP, because you are stupid and very bad in even the most minor of crises. Dog runs outside. You chase.

The Guy enters the apartment, gingerly avoiding the big puddles of water you've tracked everywhere and politely averting his eyes away from you. You suddenly notice that you only buttoned one button on your shirt, but when you reach to close the wide-open shirt you forget about the shorts and they fall down to your knees.

Needless to say, there was no underwear in the laundry pile.

Guy asks if he should maybe come back in a few minutes.

You shrug helplessly. There is no point. There is no saving this encounter.

"I don't have dignity," you say. "I have a baby."

He nods thoughtfully, as if he understands. As if he's seen worse. He probably lying, but you get your cable back in time for The Price is Right.

Sweet.

TIREWATCH 2006: Day 94

Jason is away on a business trip until tomorrow night. She's been sitting there, just like that, for HOURS.

Target is the New IKEA

For several summers in a row, we've had the misfortune (translation: BREATHTAKING STUPIDITY) of going to IKEA on a big back-to-school weekend. Possibly THE back-to-school weekend. You know, the COLLEGE STUDENT back-to-school weekend, when every single college student from every single college in the area descends on IKEA in hopes of transforming their eight-foot cube of a dorm room into a Scandinavian paradise of modular shelving with perfectly-sized wicker baskets and big shaggy rugs, despite 1) having a roommate who is going to get drunk every weekend and dump all the wicker baskets over in attempt to find one to wear as a hat, and also 2) not realizing what a goddamned pain it's going to be vacuuming ramen noodles out of that big shaggy rug with a borrowed Dustbuster.

The good news is: we did not go to IKEA this weekend. (Although in an alternate reality we might have, had we made good on our plans to move out of the city this summer. Which you may have noticed, we most certainly did not. We attached some handles on our kitchen cabinets and Jason CLAIMS to have fixed the toilet that randomly decides not to flush, and by "randomly" I mean "every time you poop in it." But we're kind of paralyzed by fear and doubt and real estate prices that have not gone down as much as we thought, and the realization that we'd probably be the kind of homeowners who forget to mow the lawn and leave toilets on the front curb, and I am basing this on the fact that we have had a SPARE TIRE in our FOYER for THREE MONTHS NOW.)

Exhibit A.

Anyway. We did not go to IKEA this weekend. We went to Target instead.

THINGS WE NEEDED AT TARGET:

1) Mouthwash, and
2) an iron.

AMOUNT OF MONEY THESE THINGS WILL COST YOU AT TARGET:

$312.87, not including the mouthwash, which we totally forgot to buy.

You know I love IKEA. You know I loooooove IKEA. In fact, I wish I were at IKEA right now, eating a 99-cent hot dog and purchasing some kind of spare-tire organizer for the foyer.

Yet you may not know that I have similar love for Target. How could I not? Target sells makeup, which you know I need a lot of to hide the black eyes I get after I anger IKEA and he backhands me across the face for daring to expect a full set of wooden dowels, like do I not know how much stress IKEA's under these days over at the factory? IKEA's boss is a total dick, and he just wants to drink some lingonberry wine to take the edge off, and then I have to barge in with my whining about a tilty floor lamp that sparks when I plug it in? Can't I just leave IKEA be for five minutes? Goddammit, woman.

Until this past weekend, I've always thought of Target as my Safe Place. It's big! Bright! Clean! (Did I ever tell you how I almost got peed on at Wal-Mart once? By someone who I did not give birth to, who is pretty much the only person who would make that sentence even remotely less horrifying?  I mean, I'll gladly let IKEA crush my tender spirit for the sake of a cheap TV cabinet but I REALLY DRAW THE LINE AT GETTING PEED ON WHILE TRYING TO BUY A WAFFLE IRON.)

Anyway. Target + Saturday + suburban parking lot + 40 Million College Students Who All Want the Same Damn Minifridge and Are Willing to Fight to the Death Over It = A Very Bad Saturday (Weeping + Gnashing of Teeth)²

You might want to put that equation on a little flashcard. For your wallet maybe.

The good news is that we got a lot of cool stuff that we totally didn't realize we needed until that very moment, although I am trying to think of a single cool thing that we bought and cannot, save for a box of Kix (not because Noah is bored of Cheerios, but because WE are bored of FEEDING him Cheerios) and an 10-pack of bibs for nine damn dollars. That's less than a dollar a bib, y'all. Go on. Do the math yourself. I double-checked it.

The bad news is that Noah yelled at the top of his lungs the entire time -- not cried or fussed, just YELLLLLLLLED -- and at one point I decided the thing to do would be to just YELL BACK, and I did this at the precise moment of an announcement over the store's loudspeaker, which everyone in a five-aisle radius miraculously decided to shut up and listen to, and then Noah -- startled more by the loudspeaker than my yelling, I think -- crumpled into a little bundle of teary tears, much to the tongue-clucking dismay of some nearby tongue-cluckers.

I may also have been holding a box of condoms at the time.

The worst news, however, is that I killed a woman in line for writing a personal check, realizing that she had a actually had a coupon for Goldfish crackers, then realizing it was an EXPIRED coupon, and then deciding that she didn't actually want a box of Goldfish crackers after all. I killed her, and I am writing this entry from jail.

It's not bad, actually. Although a nice shaggy throw rug and a minifridge would really brighten things up.

Next time, I will pee on Goldfish Cracker Coupon Lady.

In Which I Make a Complete Ass of Myself, Part Four Million and Twelve

Oh my GOD. People. Keep me away from other people, okay?

Last night Jason and I went out for dinner, alone. Gloriously alone. And it was glorious.

Afterward we decided to have a glass of wine at the restaurant's bar before hailing a cab home, home where our dog had most likely taken a dump somewhere and our baby was just waiting to wake up at the sound of the front door opening and scream bloody protestations at being left with a babysitter and also where the damn cat was, the damn cat whom I am no longer speaking to after I realized that he chewed off all the straps on all the sundresses in my highly scientific dry-cleaning pile.

There were exactly two empty seats at the bar, and I pressed towards them with singular determination and purpose.

I turned around and realized that Jason was shaking hands with someone back near the entrance of the bar. I huffed back over, while thinking nasty impatient thoughts (we could lose those seats! I could have to STAND UP while drinking! what the hell!).

The guy Jason was talking to seemed to know who I was. "Hi!" he said brightly, "I'm Tom!"

Amy: blankstare

I smiled over-biggly and probably showed too much of my gums and shook his hand, while waiting for Jason to provide some context. Work? Blog? Work? Hmm?

Tom of Mystery: Congratulations, by the way!

Amy: blankstare

Tom of Mystery: Congratulations on...the...baby?

Amy: Oh! Right! Him. Yes.

Tom of Mystery: glances around at our babyless state in alarm, probably wondering if I always need to be reminded that I had a child at all and whether I had perhaps left him with the restroom attendant

I muttered something about having a babysitter and possibly a joke about the whole baby thing being so last year, and then frantically eyed those empty seats at the bar and telepathically begged Jason to LET ME KNOW WHO THIS PERSON IS OR RELEASE ME BACK TO THE ALCOHOL. They kept talking while I was suddenly overcome with the sensation of having something in my teeth.

Finally something in their conversation triggered a flash of recognition. Something about...food. Something about getting lunch one time last summer. Something about the hushed, conspiratorial way he'd said his name. Toooom.

"Holy shit." I suddenly blurted out of nowhere. "You're Tom Sietse..."

I stopped there, thanks to the burning glares of glarey death I was now getting from both of them.

Y'all. I almost publicly outed the head food critic for the Washington Post. 

Then I told him I was a "big fan, man. A really big fan." I think I shook his hand again.

I went into my own patented oh-my-God-I-want-him-to-think-I-am-cool-hyperoverdrive mode, and pretty much hijacked the entire conversation, pointing out that we had the babysitter because it was our first time at this particular restaurant and we NEVER take the baby the first time because you just never know if it would be appropriate, you know? and we are so not THOSE PEOPLE who drag their baby everywhere because they assume everyone loves their baby although OMG, do you want to see pictures? I have pictures, also am I talking too loud? Am I talking too much? What?

Pretty much the only redeeming aspect of the entire encounter was that since I hadn't been able to order a glass of wine, I didn't spill anything on his nice jacket.

One day, I want to be graceful. I want to smile without baring all my teeth. I want to stay calm and reserved throughout entire conversations and not bounce around like a hyperactive second grader. I want to have a nice laugh instead of a cackle that requires my jaw to unhinge from my face. I want to not interrupt anyone ever again simply because I'm in such a rush to agree with them. I want to control my hand movements and not spill or knock things over.  I want to drink a martini while standing up.

But mostly, I want to just not be such a total fucking spazz all the time.

Is probably a lost cause, no?

wahm

the kitchen is dirty.

i should unload the dishwasher.

there are fingerprints all over the tv.

i should get that coffee stain out of the rug.

the trash needs taken out. the litter box needs scooped.

we need diaper genie refills.

i should fold that mountain of laundry in the nursery before the dog pees on it.

i should walk the dog.

i need a shower.

i need to eat something besides coffee.

i should take a vitamin.

i should take noah to the pool. or to the park. i should find a playgroup. i should not let him watch so much tv. i should teach him to wave bye-bye. all the other babies his age are waving bye-bye. if he was still in daycare he'd probably know how to wave bye-bye.

i need to pay those bills.

i need to find a new babysitter.

i need to post at clubmom. i need to post at amalah.

i need to be funny. i don't feel funny.

i need to get started on next week's advice column. i need to write that other article. i need to invoice that guy for that thing. i need to email that other guy about that other thing.i need to work on that outline. i need to read that book for that review that i still need to write. i need to get ahead. i need to pull myself out of this hole.

i need my other hand so i can hit the shift key.

i should get my sleeping baby off my lap. i should put him in his crib so i can get things done.

i should.

but i won't. just this once.

i need this.

Blog, Interrupted

After posting the Journey to the Center of the Save As Draft Function entry last week, I got so.much.nice.email. And guess what! I even answered a lot of it! I know! I read my months-old rants about "I get tooooo much eeeemail, waaaaaah" and rolled my damn eyes, because seriously: NICE EMAIL. WHAT AN AWFUL TRAGEDY. SAY HI TO THE NICE PEOPLE ALREADY.

So I did. And it was FUN, and reminded me why I like you Internet people so much. I mean, some of you. Sometimes. You know.

Anyway, a LOT of that nice email included nice requests for that "Plot Holes" entry I never got around to writing -- in particular, about my recovery from depression in 2004. Whee! Now there's a rollicking good topic.

Even now, it's a tough thing to revisit. It was a tough time. There was a lot of stuff I never shared with the Internet, but picking through all the drama and the crazy for the stuff that makes me sound merely delightfully unbalanced instead of holy shit, she's just plain fucking insane seems dishonest and self-serving.

(I adore this column by Heather, by the way, particularly this quote: I realize that I was trying to appear as the most reasonable insane person I could possibly be. If I was going to be insane, I would do it as perfectly and neatly as I could.)

But I can be totally honest about one thing: I'm not that girl anymore. I look back on the way I was with a very hazy recollection, like it couldn't really have been that bad, could it?

It was that bad. But it's better now. And I can tell you about it because it's better.

*****

By the time I began writing publicly about my little downward spiral into depression, I'd already been suffering in silence for several months. Nothing was helping. I could barely get up the energy to write about anything, much less anything "funny."

People in real life suspected something was up anyway. So I started writing, hoping I could work something out and get to the bottom of whatever it was and maybe connect with other people who had gone through the same thing.

Honestly, I kind of wish I hadn't done that.

Because while it's one thing to get pigeonholed as a Mommy Blog, it's quite another to be a Depression Blog. That's all I ended up talking about. It's all people wanted to email me about. I became fixated on this one small part of me and bought into the whole "it's a disease, there's nothing you can do about it" passive approach to recovery and just sunk deeper and deeper into the funk.

By the time I turned a corner in the fall of 2004, I realized that my recovery needed to be done in private, and I slowly stopped mentioning "It."

Anyway. That's why I wrote about It and that's why I stopped writing about It. Here's what you missed:

I believe I started getting sick after my very first round of Clomid, a fertility drug. The hormonal surges were intense, and coupled with month after month of failure, I got very blue and irrationally moody.

The whole babybabybaybaaaaayyyybeeee quest that I was on drove a wedge between Jason and me, because I felt he wasn't being supportive and he felt I was obsessed and pushing him into something he was convinced would still happen on its own. And then I would flip out because what, was he telling me to "just relax?" Did he not listen to my doctor? Oh, THAT'S RIGHT, I went to all the appointments by MYSELF, because he wasn't being supportive and he felt I was obsessed and round and round we go! The carousel of How to Fuck Up a Really Good Marriage Without Really Trying!

I started making some really bad decisions. One of which was to let my doctor medicate me to the gills without ever suggesting I get some sort of therapy. And I'm not talking about a nice dose of Zoloft.  I'm talking about Tom-Cruise-Would-Have-A-Point-If-He-Weren't-Such-An-Idiot doses of heavy mood stabilizers and stuff traditionally prescribed for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

I'd weathered depression and panic successfully before -- once, like everybody else in America, after 9/11 and then a more severe bout during the reign of the D.C. sniper. A relatively mild course of medications worked, which is why I was more than willing to offer my brain up to the Pfizer gods once again. When I didn't respond to the usual protocol (probably because of the hormonal changes brought on by the fertility treatment), I freaked out and let my doctor dope me up to her heart's content.

I did not need these drugs. Of that I am very sure. My doctor gave me a lot of additional medications in order to treat what were essentially SIDE EFFECTS of other medications. She upped doses after a week (or less) and did not listen to me when I tried to tell her about some of the very real problems in my life. I completely defined myself by the mini-pharmacy on the nightstand.

I Take Anti-Psychotics, Therefore I Am. I mean, I must be. Right?

It's no surprise that I absolutely disintegrated in her care. The medications destroyed me. I got my days and nights switched around. I developed OCD and all sorts of tics and twitches. I had panic attacks every time I left the house. I trembled constantly. I started to hurt myself and hallucinate. I scratched at my wrists until I bled. I basically dared Jason to leave me, because I saw myself as irrevocably broken and fucked up.

Break with reality much? JESUS.

One night I went to take some Excederin for a headache and I just. Kept. Swallowing. Pills. My doctor suggested it was time to consider hospitalization. I called a therapist instead.

She listened. She told me to knock it off and get a fucking grip on myself. That I was sick because I spent so much time obsessing about being sick and letting my other doctor treat me like I was sick and I was using the "sickness" as an excuse for truly wretched, childish behavior. She said I was "ambivalent about being a grown-up." She said I had "zero coping skills." Then she gave me a hug and told me that I was Not Crazy. She told me everything was going to be okay.

I started backing off the medications just a few weeks later. My therapist challenged me, questioned me and helped me immeasurably. It was harder and a hell of a lot more expensive than medication. I confronted some horrible, ugly things about my past. It was painful. And private. Thank you.

Is this the approach I think everyone should take? Hell no. It's not even the approach I would always take. But it's what worked for me then, so there you go.

I was med-free by December and pregnant by January.

I've been doing really pretty okay ever since.