By Kate Abbott
I had the Zoloft. I needed to take it. But I was still standing in my kitchen the day after seeing my nurse practitioner, holding a pill so small I could barely feel it on my palm. How could this pill be strong enough to pull me out of this hole I couldn’t get out of on my own? This tiny pill, I thought, was stronger than I was.
I wanted to take it. But I also hated to take it and admit this was a problem that I could not fix on my own. Taking the pills could save me. I wanted them to save me. But at the same time, it would mean admitting, finally, completely, that I needed them to be myself. To be who I used to be. If I could even be that person anymore.
Almost every part of me knew I needed to try this. Following my nurse Lynn’s carefully written instructions, I positioned one small pill on a paper towel, then found my tiniest, sharpest knife and quartered the pill, sending some dust specks falling onto the paper towel. I held one quarter in my palm, barely able to feel it. It was about the size of a single Nerd candy. I was desperate for this tiny piece of pill to help me, but I was certain it couldn’t do much of anything at this size. I put it in on my tongue, sipped juice, and couldn’t tell if I’d swallowed it. I stood in my kitchen, listening to my son Henry drink his own juice in the high chair, watching me and kicking his feet. I didn’t want to move just yet. Stupidly, I waited for something to happen. I knew it would take a couple of weeks to feel any effects. I knew this dosage probably wouldn’t do anything. But the part of me that wanted to resist the pills was also hopeful they might work. Happy pills, right? Did they make me instantly happy? I feared that and wanted it desperately, too.
Henry knocked over his juice and started crying. I got a dishtowel and went over to sop it up. He flipped his spoon out of his mashed sweet potatoes, sending them flying onto the floor, the walls, and me. I laughed at myself, at the whole situation, and wanted to cry. They weren’t working yet; they weren’t going to cure me today.
I took my carefully quartered pills for 8 days with no bad effects. Every morning I thought, Maybe today will be the day it will all change. The day I will change. But I didn’t feel all better. Then I noticed I was able to take a shower a couple of days in a row and even get dressed. Was it working? Was that my newfound hope at work, or was there something chemical going on already? While I wanted to be skeptical and not get suckered into some placebo effect, I was feeling better; and when I could be outside with Henry and not feel utterly exhausted and angry and sad, when I could see it was another couple of hours until Brad would be home and I wouldn’t collapse in total despair, I did not care if this was a placebo effect or not. I just cared that I was starting to feel better.
I progressed through the weeks to taking one whole pill a day. And then one morning, I woke up and thought it looked like a nice day outside and maybe Henry and I would go in our little backyard and look around at our plants. We hadn’t been out there in so long. I wandered over to the window at the back door, and it was like I was looking at someone else’s yard. The patio we’d built had weeds taller than Henry growing up through every space between the paver stones. The plants I’d collected over the years looked dry and dead, even though it was spring.
How had this happened so fast? I thought. And then it hit me—it hadn’t happened fast at all. The weeds had been slowly growing since the summer. The plants had been slowly dying since the summer. For eight months. I hadn’t even looked at them really.
I scooped up Henry, both of us in our pajamas. Henry giggled on my lap and I actually giggled back at him, grinning at his smile, at his gums and his two perfect little white teeth. I looked at him in astonishment. I felt like I hadn’t seen him in a long time.
“Where have you been?” I said. He blinked at me.
“Mom-om-om,” he said. “Mom” had been his first word, a couple of months ago. I had felt unworthy then.
“Yes, I’m your mom-mom-mom.” I bounced him. I saw him. He was a baby, but almost not. He had a full head of blonde hair now and it was getting long. He was chewing with his sharp little teeth and his hard gums. He was looking at me and I was seeing it.
That is when I knew I was getting better. I could see him and the plants and the weeds and the sunny day outside. I saw my toenails with some purple polish I’d been motivated to put on last week. I saw my pajamas, not matching, but also not what I would be wearing all day anymore, either. I realized that each day that week, I’d been having longer “good” times. Today, maybe the good times would even be longer than the bad times.
We went out to water plants. I cared about my poor neglected plants and my poor unseen baby and my sad attempts at motherhood. I wanted to dig up dead things and pull old weeds and plant new seeds and I wanted to start everything over again. And even if it was just pulling weeds, I hadn’t wanted to do much of anything in a long time. Starting with the weeds was just fine with me. We both couldn’t wait to get our hands dirty.
Kate Abbott recently completed the postpartum depression memoir Walking After Midnight, where a version of this essay appears. Her YA novel Disneylanders was published in 2013. She lives in Northern California with her husband, son, and tiny parrots.