Serious and Sad

I am nearly at the end of my study journey. So much has happened. I am on the verge of finishing with the title of student. I am maybe on the verge of finishing with the title of single mother too. I am on the verges of my own sanity. University has been a myriad. A myriad of all sorts of ups and downs. I owned up to the realness of depression. Something that has nipped at my heels all my life. First through watching my own mother battle with it and having no concept of what was wrong for her. I blamed myself, and my 'unloveability' on her not being there for me - then I blamed her very angrily, and for a long time. Then I ignored my own diagnosed depression after the grief and loss of losing the father of my children. I ignored it by sweating it out at 6am in the community hall aerobics class. The great surge of feel good endorphins buoyed me enough that I ignored the moodiness and got on with life. Then last year, it caught up to me. I couldn't run. The exercise was wonderful but a fast tracked uni degree was leaving me no time. No time. No time. I took the old prescription. I filled it. I went to my doctor a week later and told her I had medicated myself. She didn't berate me for that - she supported me. I had found one of those outcrops of rock that you hit. A rock bottom. I jumped off the fast track. I tried to repair my family. I took some time off of study. What happened next was that in the happy blur of coming up from rock bottom. I met someone. I met someone and had a lovelyhoneymoon phase. It lasted until I realised that something was not quite right. Despite the birth control pill I had managed to fall pregnant. It couldn't be worse timing, or better. I was now due to have a baby right around the time that I would be finishing my studies. I was due to have a baby with this young single man who I didn't live with. Who had been a fun lover for a matter of months. Who had no responsibilities at all. Who was now facing a huge raft of decisions that stood between me, him, impending fatherhood and my 3 children. And in the midst of this I chose to come off of my anti depressants in consideration of my unborn child. This was a personal decision. I realise that many anti depressants are safe and that all mothers must (with their health advisors) weigh up the risks and benefits of medication use vs non use for their individual considerations. I was planning a home birth. I was concerned that the small risks may have been too much risk. It is months later now. As happens to many women, my depression has relapsed. Whether it is the shift in hormones, the stress I feel coming to the end of my degree or something that just doesn't work right in my emotional make up...I don't know. What I know is that I am not right. I am all sorts of wrong. I don't know what I will do, or where I will go from here. I have some ideas. None of them include self harm. Although the emotional pain is unbelievable. I feel like I have been transported back into those weeks of grief and loss, where my heart was ripped out of my body, where my throat bled from howling, where my body collapsed and I could not go on. The difference is that this time it is more mystifying. I have not lost anyone. except myself. I may be losing my children. This huge sadness has turned me into a horrible person. I am spiky and angry and rude. People have abandoned me in droves, and I don't blame them but I miss them. I wish they were still here next to me. I wish they could push through my spikes and just tell me that everything will be ok. I wish they could see that I am lost and scared and do NOT mean the angry words. I just want to be stroked and held and loved. Most of all I want to know that I still deserve to be loved. I am not a monster. I am being consumed by something monstrous. It is not me. In ten days I will be finished with assignments. I will be finished with due dates. I will be finished with the mother guilt of putting my children's needs aside because university takes priority. I will probably still have depression. Here's me hoping that I will know then how to start the journey out of this dark place. Celebrating the end of my studies, I never imagined it would take me to the ends of myself.