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Four years later, I am still helping to run the residential school in Vermont. Kurt is away at a graduate school conference. We have two children now. The baby is teething and has been crying for forty-five minutes. Our toddler is screaming at me to play with him. “NOW MAMA!” he hollers. He hands me his stuffed cow, the one that moos when you touch it. The baby wails in my arms, her face red. I can’t think. There is too much crying and screaming: WHAAAAA. MOOOOO. NOW MAMA! Something inside me snaps, and I explode. I grab the stuffed cow and throw it against the wall, hard. Make it stop. I need silence. I want to smash it to pieces. Instead it lands with a thud, but nothing else happens. “Mooooo,” it moans. “MOOOOOO,” it cries again, louder, it seems. I’ve succeeded in making it whine more. The baby is still crying. My son is also wailing now. I feel suddenly terrible for him. What have I done? In angry response, the cow says, “MOOOOOOO.” I need to get out of here. I can’t do anything right. I’m not cut out for parenting.
Kurt walks in the door. I hand him the baby and the broken cow toy. The toddler lifts his arms; he wants to be picked up by his dad. I escape to another room.
I call the number on the crumpled piece of paper. It is for a therapist. A friend recommended her to me years ago, but I never called, because I thought, Therapy is for broken people with terrible childhoods. I am just a little overwhelmed. But now I hear a woman’s voice on the other end. She sounds kind. She sounds smart. Can you see me now? I hear myself ask. I sound like I am begging.
I grab the car keys. I tell Kurt I’m going out. He waves goodbye. I can’t tell if he’s angry or relieved that I am leaving.
It’s early summer in Vermont. As I drive, I feel the thick trees on both sides of the road squeezing in on me. The forest seems dark and unfriendly. And even though my breath is shallow and I can’t get air, I roll the window up tightly.
Hilary’s office is in her barn, upstairs. The morning light comes in through the giant windows up near the roof and I can see the sky. I want to stay here. I feel like asking her to write me a note, to excuse me from having to go back to the crying and screaming and mooing.
“Do you second-guess yourself?” she asks.
“All the time.”
“Give me an example.”
“I should not have had children.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m not good at it. I don’t know what to do. I throw their toys at walls. I think about driving across the border and never coming back.”
“If a woman feels angry, struggles, and needs quiet to think, then there must be something wrong with her, not with society. Is that what you think?”
“What do you mean by society?”
“Our culture sends a clear message to women: good mothers are calm, loving, and willingly sacrifice themselves for their children. When you fall short of those expectations, the problem isn’t that we have created an unattainable myth of mothering, but that you are a failure and broken.”
“That’s how I feel; I am a failure.”
“What do you think when you wake up?”
“Another chance to feel bad all day.”
“Do you think you are depressed?”
“I don’t know. I have a great husband, great kids, and a great job. How can I be depressed?”
“It’s very common.”
“Sometimes it’s good. Like yesterday, when the rain cleared, the kids and I went on a rainbow and puddle hunt. I felt genuinely happy then.”
“Sure. But what keeps you up at night?”
“I feel like I could not survive without my husband or my colleagues, but that they would be totally fine without me. What does that make me?”
“Depressed. Let’s get you some medication for now.”
“Will that help me get more done?”
“It’s not about getting more accomplished; it’s about feeling better,” she says, laughing a little.
“But if I take the meds to feel better, then that proves that I am a depressed person. And I have no reason to be depressed.”
“You don’t need a reason. It doesn’t matter why you are struggling, it only matters that you are. No amount of working harder will change the chemical imbalance in your brain.”
“But that feels like a death sentence, not a solution.”
“It’s not forever. Things change. You only feel that way because you learned somewhere that you are supposed to be happy all the time. That’s a lot of unrealistic pressure.”
“But maybe if I did more to be better at mothering, or better at my job, I would feel better, and I would be happy. I wouldn’t need meds.”
“You don’t need to do more, excel more, or accomplish more to be more worthy,” she says firmly.
I want to believe her. I hear the truth in what she is saying, but I can’t shake the notion that I am broken. I leave her office feeling like I have duct tape on my forehead that labels me as “DEPRESSED.”
#
I am thirty-nine. Ten years into our marriage, Kurt and I are struggling. Maybe it’s my depression. But he’s the one who seems gloomy. I take my antidepressants every day, but I wonder why I still don’t feel happy. Maybe it’s just middle-age marriage stuff. I don’t know, because no one talks about the difference between normal problems and red-flag warnings. Our relationship is suffering under the weight of stress, children, and money issues. How do I know this rough patch will pass? What if things never get better?
One evening, I prepare a big taco dinner for everyone. When I finally sit down, I notice that Kurt is almost done eating. I wait for the kids to leave the table and turn angrily to Kurt.
“Can’t you see that I always eat last? Just once I want to sit down and eat first,” I say.
“But the food was getting cold,” he says sheepishly.
“That’s not the point!”
“What is the point?”
“Why can’t you just get me?” I snap at him. He opens, then closes his mouth, without saying anything. I don’t want to explain that in life, as with this meal, I feel like I put everyone else before me. I want him to put me first without me having to tell him to do so. Can’t he understand that?
Kurt and I are just too different. He thinks linearly and speaks directly. I think emotionally and speak indirectly. I’m an extravert who feeds off social energy. He is an introvert who prefers to be alone. I should have stuck to my perfect partner list, because all I see now are the cracks and imperfections in Kurt. I want to fix them all.
I bring him to a coffee shop and make him write down his career goals. I think I’m helping, but he feels like I am micromanaging. Things on the surface of our relationship suddenly bother me. I beg him to exercise more, to drink less, and to wear something other than his old blue sweatshirt. I know I’m being shallow, but I can’t stop thinking about all the ways he could change for the better. I spend my free time worrying about the future and criticizing him. He ignores me and dives deep into his dissertation. We go to bed at different times. We wake at different times.
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