So most people who have known me for more than two seconds know that I had horrific (is there any other kind?) post-partum depression when Perrin was born. It went medically untreated for six months due to the worst therapist ever and then it took a bit to find a medication that worked for me. Zoloft did not. Wellbutrin, however, has been a good fit. And I've been on it ever since. Occasionally I toy with the idea of weaning off but life shit keeps coming up so I keep kicking that can down the road. However, there is one aspect of PPD that never went away. Maybe it's not even part of the PPD? Maybe it's just my own personal blend of depression and anxiety? IDK. But intrusive thoughts have always been a part of my day to day ever since I had Perrin. I've also noticed that while Joey recognizes that *something* is wrong, it's kind of hard for him to wrap his head around. So I'm going to try and explain what my experience with them is like because I'm sure it's kind of confusing for regular folx who don't deal with any sort of mental health issues.
     First of all, I'm gong to back up and explain my relationship to my brain in general. I don't really remember a time I haven't dealt with depression and anxiety, so I'm not sure what a normal relationship with your brain looks like, but I'm guessing most people without mental health issues don't have to really think about their relationship to their brain much at all. When I talk about my mental health, I tend to see myself in two parts- me, with my logical, functioning thought processes, and my brain, which I blame for the illogical weird shit that goes on in my head. So I spend a lot of time and mental energy "cleaning up" after my brain- mitigating weird thought patterns and trying to manage physical manifestations that are triggered by them. And it's exhausting, because it's damn near constant. So even without intrusive thoughts already in the mix, I feel like I already devote a lot of time and energy to not feeling (and acting) like a crazy person. The second piece of this is that my brain (as I conceptualize it in regards to my mental health) acts independently of my more rational self. I can't control what my brain does; I can just try and buffer it as much as possible.
   Not everyone is familiar with intrusive thoughts and I'm sure you can Google a really helpful definition. For me anyway, it's like someone flips on a movie in my head at random times. Usually it's times when I'm already feeling anxious. Other times they seem to come out of no where. Hiking in the Grand Canyon? Here's a high definition short film of your kid slipping over the edge and his skull exploding on a boulder. About to fall asleep? What happens if your car falls off a bridge into a river and I'm knocked unconscious and can't unbuckle Perrin from the car seat? (Spoiler: I bought one of those window-breaking, seatbelt-cutting tools) Most of the thoughts are ridiculous. But the thing about mental illness is it doesn't make sense- that's kind of the whole issue. And I haven't found any way to stop them. I can't "pause" the movie playing. I can't look away or see something else. It's just there. And I can tell myself that it's not real and not happening and not likely to ever happen, but it's still there. And that shit gets old. It gets tiring. Because I'm not only mentally dealing with all the shit that's actually happening in my life, but also dealing with the whole alternate universe were the worst possible things are constantly happening.
   A common coping mechanism is to try and prevent the bad thing in the alternate universe from happening in the real, which can lead to all kinds of bizarre behaviors. But the thing is, I didn't experience intrusive thoughts (at least not to this extent) until I had Perrin. Which kind of throws a whole monkey wrench into the mix because one thing I've always tried to be very aware of is making certain I'm not parenting from a place of trauma, which I plan on making a whole other post about at some point. But anyway, I have this very strong desire to "cope" with my thoughts by avoiding the shit out of everything. You can't fall off a mountain if you never hike; your kid can't be abducted if you never let them out of your sight. That's almost a really shitty limerick. And don't get me wrong, I would be THRILLED if I never had to drive over a large river again (looking at you, Kansas River, that I have to cross like 5 times every day). But man that would be unfair to Perrin.
    So instead, I watch my weird little brain movies. And I feel the adrenaline (which my body already sucks at regulating anyway), and my jaw hurts and I feel tired. And I lie awake at night sometimes because the movies just won't stop. Sometimes I have to hold my breath and look away, but Perrin has managed to climb REALLY high. Or he wants to go on an upside down rollercoaster for the first time, so I hold on to his little knee because I don't quite trust the safety bars to fit him, even though I know there is nothing I could do to keep him in his seat. And it's really, really awful. But I want him to ride roller coasters, and take his bike up and down the block, and play in the fire pit and climb trees and do all those things I did when I was a kid. Perrin wants to get certified to scuba when he turns 10, and at this point I am about 98% convinced he will be eaten by a shark. But I will sign him up for scuba class the day he turns 10 because honestly it does sound like a whole lot of fun and I would hate for him to miss out on that, or anything else for that matter, just because his mom is a little "off". If anything, it's been a really good lesson on being very aware of my own issues and making sure I am not passing those on to him. It just happens to be excruciatingly uncomfortable for me. But life in general tends to be extremely uncomfortable for me, so it would be a real shame to put any weight into that on Perrin's account.

I Still Exist

  I have 7 unpublished draft posts that have been lingering here for a while. Seven. It was easy to post regularly when I was trapped under a nursing baby for 20 hours a day, but these days it's just so much harder to find the time. But I have been trying very hard for about 2 years now to work on developing my voice- mostly in terms of learning how to enforce boundaries with other people. But sitting down with my thoughts, writing them out, that is a kind of awareness of my voice that also does me a lot of good. So I'm going to try to get back into it. And I might as well put it out there, in case anyone else can glean anything from it as well.
  In a lot of ways, I have gotten to know myself much better over the past few years. And now that I'm figuring out who I am, I how I got here, I'd like to put more energy into who I am becoming. And like I have written about previously Becoming takes time and can get quite messy. But I've recently made it to the place where I feel healthy enough to timidly try and establish relationships again. Please know I still absolutely suck at it and by try I mean dip my pinky toe in the water and then run away. But I want to be very mindful about how I'm interacting with other people, because let's face it- I'm not very good at it yet. Practice makes perfect. And for now this is the only kind of practice I feel comfortable with. One sided, yes. But I'm especially terrible at taking things in in a healthy way, and this allows me to put energy out there while being able to carefully receive what comes back in a way that doesn't overwhelm me at the moment. So I'm just going to sit around practicing having feelings and shit, and then practice writing them down, and then maybe one day I can actually interact with actual humans again.