Juice boxes, anyone?

Listening to an audiobook called “What Made Maddy Run” about a college athlete that committed suicide. Really tragic but poignant. A story that deserves to be heard.

Emotional sluttiness: There have been many, many times where suicide seemed like the sanest, “safest” choice in the world to me.

But for NOW it seems like the sickest, least appealing idea that I have ever danced with.

DEPRESSION ALWAYS FEELS LIKE TRUTH!

I told one of my parents they were lucky I wasn’t dead once. I know I dont always measure up to what they wanted. What they’d dreamed I become. Those were THEIR dreams though. No one should make specific dreams for anyone else.

They want me to be happy. They want me to make a life, make contributions to society... and to love a lot. I want those things too - it may take a lifetime to play out, but that might be the point of my (or anyone’s) lifetime. I wonder if they saw me in a white dress next to some handsome, useful man. I wonder how they feel now knowing they probably won’t see that.

I give them both so much credit. I wouldn’t survive motherhood. To have someone need you all the time - I would lose myself. I choose Caitlin. I don’t want any genetic extension of myself. I never want I hear someone call out “Mommy, mommy, where’s my juice box?” There’s too many juice boxes in my life already… well, the “Naked” drinks - grown up juice boxes. So much sugar, but so fun. Enough about juice.

If I had a child I would feel trapped. I’m obsessed with the writer Sylvia Plath. In her dogged pursuit of becoming everything she wanted, motherhood included, she went splat into brick wall and died by her own hand. That’s not even saying it right. I’m no Plath scholar.

The point of bringing this up is that I could never live as a mother and writer. I choose the artist’s path. It matters to me more than some tenuous bond between me and whatever God might weave in me. Too fucking risky.

I’m afraid I would abandon my kids. I’m afraid i would hate them. I’m afraid I wouldn’t survive the guaranteed experience of postpartum depression. I’m afraid of my kids also being mentally ill, or of them absorbing too much world in general. There’s no good ending. Let me die alone in a nursing home. I’m okay with that being my “old lady” experience. It’s better than living but feeling your life has already ended because your kids have sucked you dry.

I shouldn’t be awake. I dozed off for 25 minutes, woke up to brush my teeth, and naturally ended up back here.

What else should I say? What else is left in my now? I might write a frank blog about autism soon. Too heavy to start that after midnight.

Ciao!