Over the last 3 months I fear I have not been the most honest about me, nor do I think I have taken on board the physical issues I have been having with this pregnancy or the emotional issues that my daughter leaving to live with her Dad has caused.
I wiped away the tears and it became a mission to get the house decorated from top to bottom so I could keep my mind busy.
Now the house is almost complete, minus one room I have nothing left to do but think about what I have avoided for last 13 weeks and it now seems to have hit me full on in the face.
Add together my already delicate self-esteem and raging pregnancy hormones and it would be fair to say I can feel myself teetering on the edge of that black hole once more.
I have been to that dark place that is depression some time ago in the past but it’s only my sheer stubbornness that is keeping me from going down that route again, in fact it’s probably the fact I have been there in the past that makes it more recognisable when it’s waving from a distance for me to come back to it this time.
For me I suppose my depression is not anything that is dire, I don’t wonder off, cause myself harm or sit rocking in a corner I just seem to go inside myself for a while, maybe it’s a self-protection thing to protect my already damaged self and I switch off. I go about the day-to-day, but for me I stop hearing what is going on around me for a while and that is why I don’t want to go back there again and why I’m glad I noticed what is happening before I get there and it takes hold.
I am coming into my 24 week of this pregnancy and I am not afraid to admit I need to be a little bit selfish and start thinking of me, saying no occasionally and planning in some ‘me’ time.
Somehow I need to figure out how to move forward without one of my children in my life, as for 14 years she was the centre of my universe, so her choice to go and the subsequent lack of contact has hurt me more than words could say, even if I understand why she wanted to see if the grass was greener, it has still hit me hard.
Over the next few months I am going to be more gentle with myself while I come to terms how my family unit has changed and how it now seems its going to stay for the foreseeable.