"We watched the same movies and shows with you over and over and over and..." was basically my parents' rebuttal to my comment months ago about our son repetitively watching the Hotel Transylvania trilogy.
I get it. I relentlessly forced them to watch Barney the Dinosaur and the clay-mation version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I'd be less than sympathetic, too. 😉
Once I got over the hurdle of accepting that Drac, Mavis, and all of their friends were now just part of our family dynamic, I began paying closer attention to the plots, family systems dynamics, and emotional duress the characters faced (as a former seminarian and current pastor is want to do).
Upon the fourth or fifth viewing of Hotel Transylvania 3, I noticed a scene that was eerily similar to my own emotional well-being at the time.
Drac has just "zinged" (a monster's version of experiencing "love at first sight") with the captain of the cruise ship that he and his family have boarded for vacation (She's a human, so even without knowing the premise of the movie, you can imagine why this could be problematic). His friends see that he's buckling under the weight of being in her presence and quickly drag him away where they try to bring him back to reality from his love-induced, gibberish-speaking daze.
After some tough love from one friend, Frankenstein tries a different approach. With empathy and care, he steps closer to Dracula, lays a hand on his shoulder and asks, "You okay, buddy?"
Drac, head hung low with a frown on his face, says, "No, not okay. Not okay."
There is something about Drac's body language--his stooped-over stance, the deeply troubled and saddened expression--along with his tone of voice that has literally given me pause every time I've watched this movie with our son since.
The look on his face, the sound of his voice, his essence of being...this is how I have felt off and on since giving birth in August of 2017.
I noticed pretty early on after returning home from the hospital, baby in arm, that something about me was not the same as it had been when we went for my induction three days prior.
"Oh, it's just hormones!"
"You're just getting used to your 'new normal'!"
"You're just exhausted. It'll get better!"
Any time I began to try to voice the lack of sameness and symmetry and sanity that I felt, I was met with well-meaning and intended-as-encouragement opposition.
It wasn't until I found myself in the floor of my parents' downstairs bathroom about a month or so after he was born that I began to think I might need to voice those concerns to someone with a degree in medicine. I remember that he was especially fussy that night and struggling to go to sleep. The conversation about what should be done to help him just seemed to go in circles. I can barely remember being able to comprehend the words everyone was saying, let alone process those words in order to come up with a game plan to comfort the struggling babe. I did not speak up because I had no idea what was wrong with him and was exhausted and felt like there was no air left for me to breathe in the space where the discussion was being held. So, I scurried downstairs, fell to the floor, leaned against the tub as if I was trying to keep it from falling out of its structure, tried to focus on my breathing through sobs, and seriously questioned whether or not Foster might be better off in the hands of people who seemed to know so much more about him than I did.
They had all of these ideas about how to help my kid. And I didn't have the first inkling. I couldn't even put their ideas in motion.
How could this be?
"How could I possibly be this bad of a mom already?" I remember thinking to myself.
I didn't think in great detail about harming myself that night, but I did seriously question--just for a moment--if he wouldn't be better off if I just disappeared.
The next week I scheduled an appointment with my OB's office, talked with one of the NP's and got put on one of the lowest doses of generic Zoloft possible. She told me what I was thinking, feeling, and experiencing was not uncommon in postpartum while also assuring me that those things need not be my "new normal."
The anti-depressant has significantly helped with my postpartum anxiety and depression, but there are still days (or even a few days strung together now and again) where I struggle.
A couple of months ago, I'd reached another head in my mental and emotional health and finally decided to try therapy. After three sessions, I realized that--more than anything--I was in need of a safe space to release all of the things that I was carrying on a daily basis that were simultaneously furthering my anxiety and feeding my depression.
Between the stress of being the parent to a kid who is severely allergic to two "Top 8 Allergens" (and having witnessed him suffer through more than one anaphylactic reaction to those allergens), being a pastor, being a pastor's spouse, completing the ordination process, trying to be a decent human being in there somewhere, and trying to figure out how to love myself fully when I am so critical of myself in almost every aspect of my life...it was a lot for me, personally, to process and navigate well without some help.
I'm in a much healthier head and heart space than when I set foot in my therapist's office almost two months ago. Having received incredibly helpful practices from her to work on in my daily life, I'm taking a break from therapy for now but have received the invitation to call and set up an appointment if ever I again find myself in a similar place. For this, I am thankful.
I am slowly but surely learning how to better be honest with myself and others when, like Count Dracula, I am "...not okay. Not okay." It is an ongoing learning curve that I am trying to be more open and vulnerable and vocal about.
When I don't feel well--when I am down and struggling to get back up, when my anxiety is peaked--I actually hear the tone of his voice as he says he's not okay; I see his posture and his defeated expression. What he looks and sounds like on the outside has become the imagery for what I feel like on the inside when depression or anxiety rear their ugly heads. And I'm learning to be okay with that.
I am at a place now--between medicine and therapy and supportive family and friends--where I can consistently find my way up and out of the shadows of depression as well as down from the heights of anxiety.
I have nothing else to attribute to this sense of "place" but God's abundant grace--actively moving in and through people in my life...actively moving in and throughout all of creation. I have nothing but the love of God to attribute to feeling like it is okay to voice this small part of my story because God's love tells me that no matter how down and out I am, there is nowhere too "down" or too "out" that God will not be with me there, loving me back to fullness of life as God intends for me (and for all of us) to experience.
I am learning that it's okay to be "not okay."
I hope you will join me in this learning, too. You are not alone.
Deep Peace,
MK
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