I shared this with friends yesterday, and the outpouring of support was amazing. You never realize how difficult parenting is for everybody until you share something that's hard for you and literally every friend who has a kid tells you their own version of it.
But a lot of people were taken aback by my depression. I don't know what to say to that. Depression really fucking sucks, but I'm OK. Not often great right now, though the exceptions are notable. Pretty often I'm good. It's just that when I'm not, I'm not, and if I want to be honest about my experience as a parent, I have to talk about the dark feelings, because they're usually there whether they're affecting whatever I'm doing at the moment or not. The day I wrote the post Love My Daughter, Hate My Life was a bad one. I don't really hate my life, but there are a lot of moments I hate, and as I said, I'm unfortunately more inspired to get the bad feelings out of my head and into print than the good ones.
Today has been a really good day. We got out of the house to go to the library, which meant I had to shower and comb my hair (winning!), and I got to see and interact with human beings who can talk and who don't routinely shit in their pants. One of the hardest things to handle as a parent who yearns for control is living moment to moment. Yesterday afternoon was really bad. Last night wasn't great. But today so far has been really, really good. And that's plenty for now. I'll worry about the rest of the day as it happens.
I wish my library was like yours. I routinely smell one or two dudes who I'm pretty sure have shit their pants.
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