I Had Wanted To Write About Depression / About The Ones That Have It / About The Ones That Don't

For many days there are no words. But -

There is the red whiskered bulbul in the Saffron tree.

There is my dream of Vishnu. His blue skin and his extra hands.

There is the coyote who has made its home in the shade. Hunting the ground squirrels all over our property, eating the green walnuts and what was left of the loquats.

The days going again into heat.

My daughter naps beside me in the mornings and a half hour later opens her eyes and says Milk? Turning to me.

We had been weaning.

During the weeks that my lungs began filling with water a friend posts.

There’s a new pill for postpartum depression would you take it?

And I think of how little people know about drowning. How silent it is. How that is the warning.

And my husband says Let me take the baby for a little while.

And a girlfriend says I think I can take both girls so you can have a moment.

Sometimes it feels like no matter what it’s never enough.

August coming so hard and fast I could already see the end of it. My favorite month. Sometimes, nothing can staunch the heartbreak of summer. The history of it that lives in my body. The grief that winds it way through the writing, and the meals, and middle of the night wakings. There is no amount of cherries or peaches or plums or salt or sun or sand or love that will make it go away.

I had never just wanted to be a mother.

Patience. I have to say to myself as I go up to soothe my screaming daughter, who has been screaming for weeks now. Gentle. I have to say to myself. And on the morning we take her to the doctor, she is herself again. Cheerful, reading, pointing her finger from the backseat into the mirror at whoever is driving and declaring EIEIO. And we listen to nothing else.

A girlfriend writes me Hang in there. Parenting is really hard for good parents.

Do you know how it ends? My husband asked once of a movie I was writing.

Yes. I tell him. Surprising him.

How?

By burying them.

A rat gets into our house. The cat and I hear it first but we haven’t been able to catch it.

At a year of my daughter’s life I googled “Is there a hormone drop at 12 months?” Trying to find an answer for the new ache that had sprung up, and finding none.

And sometimes when I am feeling pious - I try to thank my depression for showing me what I am missing. Earlier mornings perhaps? Maybe taking the baby to the beach in the evenings when the sun is not so hot, when the traffic is a little less, and sticking our feet in the ocean? The contrary action. That, that might mean, taking something when I don’t want to despite the stigma. Because sometimes it is not enough, and then sometimes just naming it can help to change it.