Not ok

After this post the other night, I started doing some thinking. That thinking made me realize why it is that I get so irritated by the articles/websites/people in the "you can do eet!" vein. It's because I don't feel like I can do it. I realize that I'm not the first person to ever deal with depression, post-partum or otherwise. I know other people have overcome this. I know that some day I too will overcome it (maybe). But when your life is crumbling around you and you feel like a bigger failure than ever, each success story I read or hear about feels like a kick in the gut.

Let's face it. I'm a mess. I have a husband who has at least as many issues as I do (albeit far different ones) and is a mess in his own way. I have a job that seems to just barely pay the bills, no matter what I do. I have two beautiful sons who have destroyed my mind, body, and spirit. Kids that I can't honestly say I love more than, say, a babysitter loves her charges (love that would surely be greater if I got to give them back at the end of the night). Kids I definitely don't like a lot of the time. Kids who take everything I have to give - and then some - without providing that sense of joy a mom is supposed to get from her kids. Basically, I am flat-out miserable and unable to get the misery to change. I just want out.

I briefly looked at a PPD support blog today before I got so irritated and disgusted with it that I had to stop. One of its sponsors was a PPD resource foundation that was founded by the parents (I think) of a woman who had PPD who shot her six-week-old son and then herself. After reading her story, I thought to myself, "this woman had it right." She found a quick and easy way out from under this awful disease...I felt a teeny, tiny pang of jealousy. Wrong? You bet. But the thoughts slipped into my mind unbidden. Before anyone goes calling the crazy cops on me, I have absolutely no intentions of hurting myself or anyone else - I repeat, no suicidal ideation or homicidal tendencies. Got it?

Reading someone else's success story doesn't give me hope. It just makes me hate the successful woman a little bit. So please don't post your syrupy success story in the comments...I just can't deal with it. And if you do, I might cut you (but not in the way that requires an involuntary 72-hour hold, thankyouverymuch).

I don't know what the point of these ramblings is. I guess just to put it out there: I am not ok. Not ok at all. Not ok and not able to become ok.

I am in a place where I so desperately need and want help, but can't seem to find the kind of help I need. And until I can find that help, I guess I'll keep slogging along as I have been: not ok.