Loose Marbles

When Wriggles was about 7-nearly-8 months old, it finally dawned on me that it was probably not normal to feel how I did all the time. I did some research and read up on PND and other mental health issues and just wept and wept because it made me accept that I wasn't alone. That thousands of other women, and men, had experienced similar and had been able to do something about it. The relief was huge and when I spoke to my GP who understood, it felt as if a weight had been pulled from my shoulders, leaving me that bit more free to go on.

"Losing your marbles" is quite an apt expression I feel. For me, it did feel as if slowly pieces of me were rolling away, gathering speeding and disappearing into crevices and cracks in the floor. Tiny bubbles of worth, personality and reason, encased for safe-keeping in beautiful shiny glass, rolled off out of reach. They were slippery and looked as if they might be lost forever. Enough to mourn but as each one fledged, too tiny to bother to rescue. 

Until, into the future, one day you stub your toe and come across a forgotten treasure. Tentatively you inspect it, running your fingers over the glossy shell and peer into the wispy colours inside. Preserved is part of you, returned after a journey of loss. Sometimes you might find several at once, sometimes just one and it is months before you even recall that there were others. I am beginning to feel as if I can account for most of my missing marbles and am slowly amassing the blighters and trying to find a Safe Place to put them where they will not roll off again.

When I was in the midst of depression, it felt as if I had lost all of myself, I was just a creature wading through day to day. My feelings were muffled, my thoughts worthless. I could function practically, but I felt alone with no one to hear me. I had lost my compassion to myself and my rationality that allowed me to deal with the everyday and my innermost thoughts. In the daytime, my daughter acted as my rock, weighing me back into life and stopping me from floating away. She bound me to life and made me want to 'get better' and find everything I thought I had lost. When she went to bed and wasn't physically with me, I would fall apart night after night. It's not easy admitting you need help, especially not as an adult with responsibilities. I felt I should know better or be able to give myself a good talking to, to snap back into reality. Oh, if things were that easy! And of course it wasn't that easy merely knowing who or what was my reason for trying to find the light again. I felt like a zombie caring for her some days and my heart continually lived in my mouth on the edge of a panic attack. 


Wriggles is now 17 months old. I still feel anxious and exhausted, but I don't feel desperate. I have found an understanding, both with myself and with depression. It is no-one's fault. It is a thing, not a persona. It is thoughts, not reality.
It is something that can go away and will go away.