I’ve been thinking about Kim’s diamond earring more frequently than I’d like.
Earlier this week, I dropped the new butter dish my sister had bought me as a gift.
It was from Anthropologie, the bougie fashion and interiors shop (a sister to Urban Outfitters) I like to buy overpriced bedcovers from, and I had admired it a few months earlier, only for her to buy it for me as a no-reason surprise, presented to me out of the blue on her kitchen island one Sunday morning.
It slipped out of my fingers as I washed it, my new – for my wedding party, obviously – acrylic nail extensions failing me spectacularly as it fell to the ground, shattering into three almost perfect pieces, but with one small chip taken out of the side. But for that one chip, it would almost have been salvageable with some Loctite and a steady hand.
As it was, it was done for. And so was I. I cried hot, angry, frustrated tears in my kitchen.
“We can probably fix it,” my husband said, picking up the literal pieces as I stood, inert, weeping on the linoleum.
“We can’t!” I spluttered. “There’s a chip!” (We couldn’t have. There was, indeed, a chip.)
It’s neither the first nor the second disproportionate emotional response I’ve displayed over the past few weeks. When asked what colour scheme I’d like for my wedding party, a red mist began to descend before my eyes, which started to tear up immediately.
When my husband refused to change the baby’s nappy one day – “you said you’d bring me down the nappies and you didn’t!” – I sniffled my way through the ordeal, not helped by the fact that the baby always cries on the changing table.
“I’m sorry,” I wept, as I picked him up afterwards, hiccupping my way through sobs (mine). “I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
I’ve been depressed – at least, diagnosed as such, rather than actively feeling depressed – for years, and medicated for almost as long, but something about this has felt different.
At first, I thought it was homesickness. This feeling of frustration, helplessness, panic and rage descended right after my trip home to Dublin, and I attributed it to my rather late realisation that I would never again call Dublin my home.
Even if my husband were to go for the idea, with two small children whose custody is shared between him and his ex-wife, moving out of state, never mind across continents, would be a non-starter.
But as I settled back into the relative rhythm of life here in the Midwest, the feelings did not subside.
Then I thought it was the stress of party planning, something that does not fill me with delight.
But even as we chowed down on the last morsel of leftover key lime pie the following day, each mouthful was being choked down with the tears I was trying not to cry, the rage I was trying to suppress.
Oh, the rage.
I would not describe myself as a particularly angry person, although those who know me may disagree. I love a heated debate as much as the next person, but I dislike arguing, and anger of any flavour usually results in my dissolving into tears within minutes.
I feel frustration at this, my inability to channel my rage into anything but despair, but I have also, at the age of 37, made my peace with it. I will never be someone who uses her anger to make a point, or to win an argument; I will be the person crying, red-faced and raging, into her pillow.
Of late, this rage has been almost all-consuming, and almost entirely nonsensical. When our nine-year-old announces that he is hungry, having refused, just an hour previously, to eat his lunch, I feel livid. “I’m sorry, honey,” I tell him, breathing deeply through my nose. “You can have an apple or a banana, but that’s it. We’ll be having dinner soon.” Breathe in, breathe out.
When the baby headbutts me in the nose and I momentarily see stars, I think I might throw my car keys across the driveway.
“Is he okay?” asks Brandin, an entirely logical thinker. I, not being logical, am incensed. “Him?!” I ask, incredulously. Brandin – bless him – laughs. He laughs.
It’s fair to say he is the recipient, whether he knows it or not, of a lot of my feelings of rage.
The truly frustrating part of all of this is, I know – I knew, all along – that postpartum rage is a very real thing. I had read up on a variety of possible mood disorders I might experience after Atlas’ birth, precisely because I was so convinced that I would experience them.
And still, when the symptoms were smacking (or headbutting) me in the face, I thought, I’m being ridiculous.
That headbutt barely hurt, you’re being silly, I told myself. It’s just a butter dish. Kids are just assholes. Kim, there’s people that are dying.
It’s all too easy to dismiss your own problems when you’re living through a pandemic and there’s a literal war going on and the planet is genuinely fucked and kids are getting shot and everything is really deeply, very terrible.
But let me say this, once again, for the people down the back:
Your problems are not insignificant because they’re only happening to you. You matter. You deserve to be listened to and cared for. Life is not a zero sum game.
Then, to myself: my problems are not insignificant. I matter. I deserve to be listened to and cared for. (Life is not a zero sum game.)
So I did what I’d tell anyone else to do: I spoke to a medical professional, who sent me to my OB/GYN office to speak to a more specialised medical professional. I told her about my rage and my tears and my frustration and she said, “This is totally normal. Do you have anyone here to support you?”
I told her about my sister and my husband and my friends and she said, “But they work, right? So you’re at home with the baby, on your own, a lot?”
Then she told me that she could prescribe me something to take as needed, on days when I feel anxious or panicked or frustrated, or on days when I know something is coming up that will make me feel anxious or panicked or frustrated.
She admired my baby and she said, “Aren’t you a chunky boy?” which is my favourite way for people to admire my baby. She said, “You’re doing a great job”, and I thought, I’m doing a great job.
Atlas is my $75,000 earrings. He is beautiful and he is here and he is picking things up with his thumb and index finger and responding to his name and I am very, very lucky.
But it’s also very, very hard. And that’s okay, too. One step at a time.
On Postpartum Anxiety and Kim's Diamond Earring