This is so true that my decisions often seem to come out of thin air, even to the people closest to me. It’s as if my brain works on a problem for me in the background like so much html working behind the scenes of a website. My decisions appear fully formed and well-coded, displayed across the screen in full technicolor. Seemingly without warning, I’ll quit a job, move from Boston to Rochester, drop all my classes one semester.

But of course that’s not the whole story. Beneath those decisions lie sleepless nights, agonizing journal entries, crying jags, and sometimes even shortness of breath. Each decision is laborious, and the results are always cathartic. Even though they seem sudden to others, they are clear and perfect and right to me. They are artworks.

None of this is purposeful, of course. I don’t plan to keep things in. I don’t try to keep all of my decisions top-secret. It’s just the way I am. And it works for me in that I always trust my decisions as mine and mine alone, but it’s not very healthy. I know that.

It’s strange, then, to see a psychologist. I’ve only gone once and already I feel like I need (want?) to run every little thing by her. Should I go home to Rochester? How long should I stay? Should I finish my dissertation? What should I do about the fact that my house makes me feel anxious?

Do I look good in purple or should I stick to blues?

I am champagne that worries.

I feel like I’m standing at the top of the highest high dive waiting to jump off.  All the time.  I am continuously on the verge of diving into the tiny little pool all the way down there.

That’s what it feels like.

Oh, and a hit of Xanax helped, too.

Xanax I had previously refused to take.  So much for that.  : )

So now I’m here, at my mom’s house, and there is no baby sleeping.  I am in the baby’s room writing a post, and out in the living room I have the television on louder than I would ever watch the television.  They’re little things but I’m trying to celebrate them.  Trying to enjoy my retreat.

This is my first real “vacation” since before Evan was born.  In February, Brian and I spent one night in a hotel away from Evan, but other than that, I’ve spent every single night of the last one year and seventeen days with my baby.

I might just drag my mom out of the house at midnight tonight to go to a club or something!

Yeah.  That’s about as likely as the Earth reversing its solar revolutions.  Stay tuned to CNN for breaking news on that.

Loudly.

Then how do you start class?

That’s how I feel right now.  Like my last post was a big, giant, grown-man-sized fart.  And now I don’t know how to proceed.

Hmm.

Anyway, things are OK. Yesterday was OK.  Today was bad.  My anti-anxiety medicine is making me anxious and I had to go back to my doc today so that he could tell me to try a different one.  Tomorrow I see my new shrink.  Wish me luck.

In this one, a prescription. Paxil.

Somehow, hands full, I feel worse. I know I should feel relief. Knowing. Half the battle, all that rot. But when I left the doctor’s office today, I cried the hardest I’ve cried yet. The whole way there I practiced saying I didn’t want to go on medication, at least not without seeing a shrink, talking about my options. But when my doctor recommended it I knew he was right. In my bones I feel it: there’s something off balance inside. Yet I’m still scared to take my first pill tonight.

This sucks. Why did this happen? Why does it have to be something inside? Something persistent and tenacious. Something holding tight to my cells? Why couldn’t it be something else?

My mom’s here now. This morning in the kitchen while I cried into Brian’s shoulder I said, “I want my mom,” and sure enough, he called her and she came. 400 miles, just picked up and came. I’m pretty lucky even though right now all I feel is cellularly cursed.

I know lots of people suffer from depression. Many of my own friends have had diagnoses and prescriptions. Full hands. But I still can’t help but feel like it’s this horrible, terrible thing that you don’t recover from. It feels like something unruly inside that hates me. That will always hate me.

Yes, Evan, I know where the wild things are, with their terrible teeth and their terrible claws.

At Target, waiting for my prescription, I wandered the aisles and cried. Cried about picking up my antidepressants. Figured it was only fitting, walking through the aisles crying while waiting for my Paxil. I bet all the Paxil-waiters wander and cry.

I also bought presents for Evan. I wanted to get him a card and to inscribe it with the following:

I’m sorry, Evan. I want you to know that this isn’t about you. It’s about me and all the stuff inside me. I didn’t want this to happen, and I tried so hard to keep it at bay. I am so sorry. I’m sorry that I am not the way I want to be for you. But I’ll get better, I promise.

But I didn’t get a card. He’s just one. By the time he’s old enough to understand he won’t need to know, at least not like that. Maybe I should have gotten a card for myself instead:

Julie, everything will be OK.

Hairband Closeup, originally uploaded by letter9.

Ella at Little Red Caboose recently hosted a quick, fun little swap that I participated in. It was a fabric-covered button-making swap, and I was so surprised how easy and inexpensive it is to make these little cuties.

Here are some hairbands I made from the fabric-covered buttons. In the background are some buttons and magnets.

There are DEFINITELY more of these in my future. I loved making them. Oh, if only little boys liked pigtails. Thankfully I’ve got nieces.

I have too many things going on in my life and I am feeling too many things I don’t understand or like. I don’t know what I want or what I need. I don’t know how to solve my problems. I am happy and busy and yet at the same time, I am not myself. I am overwhelmed. I am anxious (meaning I feel anxiety) much of the time. I don’t feel depressed but at the same time, I feel like I’m not in control of my emotions the way you do feel when you’re depressed… like something inside of you isn’t working properly.

We made two big decisions today. The first is that I’m going to call my OB-GYN and ask her to refer me to someone who can help me sort all of this out. Someone who can help me get a handle on all the millions of things that are currently stressing me out.

The second is that we’re going to see if Evan’s daycare can take him fulltime for the next six months so that I can get my ass in gear and get this dissertation out of the way and behind me FOREVER. It came down to an either/or discussion: either I would stop doing the dissertation and let it go or we would see about fulltime daycare and I would forge ahead until it’s done. In the end, I decided that I sort of see my dissertation as a backup plan. My “something to fall back on.” And giving it up is too scary… leaves me feeling too much like Rachel Hunter up on the highwire on that ridiculously stupid NBC show Celebrity Circus.

And I really don’t want to feel like Rachel Hunter. Because come on. She is (was?) married to Rod freaking Stewart.

So yeah. Daycare fulltime. Something I never, ever thought I’d do to my one year old. Not that he hates daycare or anything. He doesn’t. He loves it and has made lots of friends. But mommy guilt is hitting H-A-R-D and so of course in my head it’s like I’m sentencing him to a life of horror and madness. A life in which he’ll never learn to speak or something horrible like that. A life in which he will inadvertently learn that the word “fish” actually refers to a coke can or something, and in which no one will correct him, and in which when he grows up he’ll always be asking people for a can of fish and they will think he is weird.  Which I know isn’t going to happen but HELLO?! SCARY!!

I can’t get over how hard this parenting thing is. How many decisions you find yourself making that you never thought you’d make. I still can’t believe I stopped breastfeeding at 3 weeks, even though I still stand by the decision. And now this? Seems crazy. But for now I think it’s the right thing. Or the right thing to try, since how can we know what it’ll be like until we get there.

I’ve just spent a while reading through posts of mine from last August and September, desperately seeking a comment from bubandpie about how Canadian maternity leave is a year long. I can’t find it. But basically I was complaining about how I didn’t feel ready to return to teaching, to leave my baby, to get back to work on my dissertation, etc. And she wrote saying that in Canada, the nice thing is that even if you don’t take your full year of maternity leave, no one expects you to be very smart that first year. Or something like that. And how you do feel so different at a year. And at the time I remember thinking, “Damn. Canada gets it right yet again. I want to move to Canada.” And now I’m thinking, “Damn, bubandpie sure had it right. Back then I couldn’t imagine a life not completely consumed by my sweet little baby, but here I am at a year thinking what do I need to get figured out in my own life.” Oh, that bubandpie is awfully smart.

Anyway, yesterday Evan and I finally ventured out to the zoo for the first time with Mira and Christina.  In all, I think Evan was more interested in the people than the animals, but he did enjoy seeing the fish (below) and petting the goats (belower).

In fact, I think he loves goats now as much as he loves dogs.  Does that mean I’ll be making stuffed goats?  I don’t think so.

The zoo was fun but overwhelming and exhausting.  Evan and I both passed out for a late afternoon nap when we got home and struggled to wake up after that.  I do think the sun gets its energy from us.  Yes, I do.

Number of times I called Brian today: three. Number of times I wanted to call him: three hundred. And six.

Number of steps Evan took today: three, all after 5:30 p.m. Prior to that he was all, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom, I did not learn to walk last night. You liar. Waaaaaah.”

Number of things Evan pulled over on himself today, including the kitchen chair: two. Number of times he needed me to console him for pulling things over on himself, though? Three.

Number of stuffed dogs I’ve made in the last two days in a futile attempt to make a cute, non-scary one that Evan might like: three. I’ve been making them out of white muslin so I don’t waste the cute material I’ve chosen for the end-dog, so now I have this army of large-headed, skinny-legged labrasaurus rex dogs sitting here in my basement.

The first one is the scariest:

It’s like a baby deer with a tyrannasaurus noggin.

The second one’s not so horrible except for the head and the fact that I was going for adorable and got pointy-nosed, needle-footed whippet. With a tyrannasaurus head.

And contrary to the first photo, he’s not all that stable, either.

The third one’s getting much closer:

Except he’s more like a dog blanket than a dog toy. I keep making their bellies too wide so that their legs splay out like the dogs are trying to walk on ice.

Fortunately, I think I’ve got enough good things going here to use this dog as my base pattern and adapt a few things for the final version. And yes, you’ll see it here, first.