Contentment

I was driving home today, or rather sitting on the highway outside of Atlanta, in the 100 degree heat. My SUV was jam packed with a swing set recently acquired from FREECYCLE. Swinging from one of the poles, that will one day very soon support swings or a glider or a slide, was a long strand of gossamer......and swaying in the hot wind was a very small spider. Since the cars weren't actually moving, I sat and watched it. It was trying its best to get UP the strand,but the wind which was coming from HELL itself apparently was keeping it from making proper progress.

I realized watching it that just a very few weeks ago I was a lot like that spider.

I couldn't progress. I couldn't get off the couch and get dressed. I couldn't get into the shower.

I was swinging at the end of a gossamer thread that I didn't really even know I was there.

I have had a lot of people ask me about my "depression" and it feels so odd, just a few weeks later, to have forgotten that helplessness, that hopelessness that was driving me then. Within days of returning to work my sense of purpose returned, my joy came back and I felt like me again.

Yes, it's hard to have a new baby and two special needs children and an older child who also wants my attention PLUS work full time. But it was harder to be here and completely ineffectual in every action I took. I wasn't a good Mom to anyone. I wasn't a good friend, or much of a good anything.

So at 2am, when she won't sleep I've got my copy of AMERICAN GODS next to the bed and I know that I'm going to be tired tomorrow. And I'll read while she wiggles and finds her comfy spot in my arms, and then when she finally decides she can sleep I'll deposit her in her bed and return to mine.

And I'm great with that.

How's my depression? What depression?