Zoloft

My husband’s therapist told him that if we don’t go on regular dates, we will have nothing when our children are grown. I resented her for it. I like dates, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t resent the suggestion that we’d end up with nothing, either. But I did resent the idea that there is some way to avoid ending up with nothing. The sooner I accept that nothing is the inevitable, it seems to me, the better.

But anyway, we went on a date. It was nice, as it always is when Tony and I make time for each other. I told him about resenting his therapist, among other things, and we drank coffee.

This winter, when my baby was four months old, I suddenly lost the ability to sleep. I’ve never had persistent insomnia before. My doctor told me that it was postpartum depression and anxiety. I didn’t feel sad, though I couldn’t stop crying. I was anxious, but only about the lack of sleep. I ended up with a cabinet full of sleeping pills, but the thing that finally fixed it was Zoloft. So I guess it was depression after all, if an antidepressant did the trick.

When I was first put on Zoloft, I was worried. Would it affect my breastmilk? Would it affect my baby? How long would I have to be on it? But now that I’ve been on it for four months, I hope I never have to get off. I’ve become a kinder, more patient person now that my mood is steadier. It’s amazing, really. I didn’t know it was possible to live like this.

When my older daughter was an infant, I spent a lot of time trying to fix everything. Fix her sleep, fix her eating, fix her early language development or motor skills or whatever. This time around, I am free from all that. I understand that my compulsion to fix things resulted from untreated anxiety, but also from something else, call it the Baby-Industrial Complex, that makes new mothers feel like they’re about to do something wrong at every turn. It’s just a marketing tactic, another way to get us to buy things, like so much else. With some experience under my belt, and Zoloft, I can filter it out most of the time.

I am writing grants as a freelancer and taking care of my children and going on dates with my husband, despite resenting his therapist. I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier. Most evenings I leave the kids with my husband after dinner and go for a short walk up the road, toward the line of pine trees on the horizon. Sometimes I listen to music or a podcast. I always walk quickly. Often I write things in my mind, just sentences or sometimes just words, about what I’m thinking. I forget most of it by the time I’m home.

There is something I am learning, stubbornly, about letting things go. When I couldn’t sleep I made a bargain with god, which—if I’d put it into words—would have been something like, “If you let me sleep I will never want to achieve anything again.” I did regain the ability to sleep, eventually, maybe through god, or Zoloft, or daily walks, or therapy, and I’m keeping my promise. I haven’t wanted to achieve anything since.

Wanting to achieve things is the same as wanting to fix them. For the first time in my life, maybe, I’m not trying to do either. That’s what upset me about what Tony’s therapist said, I guess. I felt like someone was telling me to fix something.

At night I sleep next to my baby daughter. She has the bluest eyes. When we wake up in the morning I look into them and I think I can see the whole world.

My grandpa died this spring. He lived his life with a certainty and conviction that seems almost magical to me. He was a kind person, but he didn’t care if he made people mad doing something he believed in. He worked so hard and did so many things and when he died he did so after a terribly drawn out physical decline. Did he have nothing, in the end?

As my grandpa was actively dying, I was slowly regaining the ability to sleep. One night I dreamed he drove a motorcycle to my house all the way across the country. I couldn’t believe it, in my dream. I didn’t know he knew how to drive a motorcycle.