A mother, a domesticated housewife, a person riddled with anxiety, depression, and OCD, but who am I anymore apart from those things? I once had dreams and aspirations. I’m not saying I don’t love my life, my child is everything. The love I have for my daughter is a mind-consuming, deeper than the oceans, more than all the stars in any galaxy, kind of love. It’s complicated, terrifying. But am I anything more than just “mom?”

My chemically imbalanced brain tells me no, that I am nothing anymore. That I lost myself when I had my daughter. That little pieces of myself chipped away throughout my marriage and motherhood. That pieces of me were lost when I quit college to be with my husband, leaving everything behind to follow him through HIS dreams. And when I then found out my husband had been fucking around while I was three months pregnant. Those pieces were never recovered, lost somewhere far away in a place I can’t reach. But, I stayed, sometimes I don’t remember why. I never wanted a broken home for my child, so did I stay out of obligation or out of love? Our daughter was born and I lost myself again. Slipping into motherhood wasn’t easy for me, i didn’t get hit with the instincts like people insisted I would. I had no idea how to take care of this life I helped create, I struggled with PPD and PPA. My brain fell into the abyss, a deep, dark hole that I didn’t know how to climb out of. I think pieces of myself still lay in the bottom of that hole, cracked and broken. Like shards of glass waiting to be picked up.

I sat in my OB’s office for my 6 week PP check, my tears splashing on the hard table below me. “Will I always feel like this, so empty?” Therapy. She said therapy will fix me, maybe medication but at my own choice. So I went. My first session I was officially diagnosed, told that I would never feel “normal” without medicinal intervention. I felt the pieces break off, right there in that sticky therapists office. So my journey with the little white pill began.

But even still, my brain is never at peace. My chemical imbalances keep my brain spinning in circles day after day. Every day I swallow that little white pill down with a gulp, the little white pill that is meant to take my problems away. The little white pill that is supposed to make me feel like a person, to make me feel whole again. I struggle daily with the thought of knowing that that pill is the one thing, the only thing, that could make me feel “normal” again. But still, my brain, a black hole that pulls me deeper and deeper into the abyss, it’s not normal. I’ve swallowed 8 months worth of those little white pills and my brain still spins.

I can’t leave my child with fears of something happening to her. Seventeen months, seventeen months I have been a prisoner to my own head. Feeling too overwhelmed and scared to walk out of the house without her. Feeling so consumed by fear and love that I can’t even think of leaving because if I do, something tragic will happen. Just like anytime I see 11:11 on the clock or an eyelash fall from my face, I have to wish. I wish for the same thing every single time because if I don’t? Something tragic will happen.

I’m rambling, I think because this is the most at peace I’ve felt in weeks, months maybe. To feel so free to write my feelings down without judgement or critiques. Because outside of this bubble, I am a mom, a wife, the shell of a person I once used to be, but here, I am only anonymous.