Your Monthly Momecdote, Issue 12: April, 2025

This blog post was originally published in my April monthly newsletter. Subscribe to receive next month's essay along with book and music recommendations.

Some of you may recall from the million times I've had to say it for promotional reasons that I was in labor with my son when THE ATLAS SIX first went viral, meaning that he was very young (indeed, a bébé) when I was doing my very first traditional publishing marketing run. One of the things I wrote around the time that he was six or so months old was this piece from the Tor/Forge blog called Motherhood and the Zombie Apocalypse, where I quoted this little essay from Rivka Galchen:

It’s true what they say, that a baby gives you a reason to live. But also, a baby is a reason that it is not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good. 

I have bipolar II, a mood disorder I've discussed many times in addition to writing about it, and one of my deepest fears is usually targeted by Latuda ads (a medication that didn't work all that well for me but I digress) where a young child is trying to coax her bipolar mother into playing with her and of course the mother is too depressed to contemplate anything but the soothing lure of the void. I am being wildly facetious about this but it's hard not to watch these commercials and feel a thousand pinpricks of dread, so let's just say it's an issue I have to approach with laughter to avoid crying. I always knew that one of the risks of having children was that even at the best of times, I'm a naturally mercurial person, even though the last thing I ever want to be is volatile, unpredictable, or confusing to the people I love. I never want the people I love to live on eggshells, but even doing my best to manage what I can, I still am what I am, which sometimes feels like the worst person ever invented. (And that's without the help of the internet, so congratulations to me for my excess.) 

I say in the ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER acknowledgments that I made my bad days my problem so they wouldn't become my husband's, but I have always wondered how I would manage when the person I'm trying not to confuse is a small child, who is already easily confused. He's quite tuned into my emotions, which often fills me with a sense of both dread and power, because while a small show of disappointment from me can cause him to hastily correct his behavior (often a useful feature), that only proves how closely he's watching me. He is looking to me to understand the world and his place in it, and the truth is that some days I'm a less reliable source than I'd like.

March is a difficult month for me for some reason, something about equinoxes, the time changing, the weather changing... who can say. We're all ultimately just temperamental plants. But I have a particularly hard time managing my psyche in March, and for me, depression often manifests as irritability--my fuse is shorter, my patience is virtually non-existent, the possibility I might react strongly to something that wouldn't bother me under most conditions is substantially heightened, plus I'm usually much more fatigued, physically and emotionally, and I struggle to take interest in things that I normally would. And this is when it hurts that toddler games and conversation can sometimes be ferociously monotonous. I don't want him to notice that there are times when I'd rather stare at the wall and dissociate than play Buzz Lightyear with him again, but he's too attuned to me to miss it, and it honestly sucks that he might ever think that's even remotely his fault. Some days it feels like a choice between constant labor or... no, that's it. Just constant labor, trying to remain as steady for him as I'd like to be, even though it's virtually impossible for me to do, and I'm not sure how successfully I'm doing it.

Almost four years after he was born, my hormonal acne issues have concerned. The patches from postpartum hair loss are finally growing back in at my temples (it looks insane). The euphoria tied to everything my child does and says is occasionally not as effective a high as it feels like it used to be. I find myself snapping more often or, on better days, repeating Daniel Tiger mantras to myself to try and calm down. I find myself wishing I could explain it to him in some way that might make sense--Mommy's sick today, she doesn't feel right, something's not working in her brain--but the dissonance between hoping I don't break and knowing it's already too late, the ax murderer's in the room with us, is sometimes very defeating. The only thing I can think to do to cope is to try to narrate my moods and emotions, so that at least he has a little bit of warning in case I ever become the Latuda Commercial Mom who can't bring herself to play. I don't know if he'll consider this constant narration to be a gift or an eccentricity--"Mommy's getting frustrated, Mommy's getting angrier, Mommy's going to go into another room now and come back when she feels calmer," like I'm the character in my own deranged play--but I hope someday, when he inevitably realizes I'm just another completely fallible person, that he'll know I was always trying to say I love you, I still love you, with every halting step. 

I once said the struggle with any mental illness or neurodivergence is the difficulty in co-existing; if I were alone, I could suffer all I wanted and the only person I'd harm is myself. But oh, that harm! It's so crazy to think how wonderful it is to share this life with the people I love, a thing that is simultaneously so dangerous and fragile because of the possibility I'll fail them in some way.

TL;DR: No morals here, no lessons, just to say wow, existing is a challenge, but how lucky am I to still try, and still care, and have all this love to treat as precious. How miraculous it is to not have to struggle alone.