It Sucked and Then I Cried

by Heather Armstrong

  So I sat Leta on the countertop to reach for my wallet, and at that moment she dropped the keys. And even though it was her fault that the keys were no longer in her mouth—IT WASN’T MY FAULT—she began to scream. And right then the present fell out of the bag. And I fumbled to get the wallet out of my pocket, and the moment I brought it in front of me Leta snatched it and grabbed the cash hanging out of the side and stuck it into her mouth.

  Dirty, dingy, germ-infested money, in my baby’s mouth. At least she was no longer screaming.

  It was in that moment, that horrible, chaotic, sweat-on-my-upper-lip moment, that I looked with pleading eyes at the sixteen-year-old barista and said, “No, seriously, I never thought I would become this woman.”

  The weekend before Thanksgiving my sister’s neighbor committed suicide. He was the father of four children, the oldest being eleven, the youngest being three, and his wife found him in their bedroom where he had hanged himself.

  When my sister called to tell me about it I almost collapsed onto the floor. That could have been me. It could have been Leta who was left without a parent, Jon without a partner. If cameras had been following me around during those awful months of my postpartum depression you would have seen me throwing full gallon milk jugs at Jon’s head. You would have watched as I slammed the front door so hard that it fell off of its hinges, or the countless number of times I called Jon at the office just so that I could hang up on him. Maybe you would have seen me through the window as I stood in front of the medicine cabinet in the kitchen trying to figure out whether or not I had the nerve to take an entire bottle of Risperdal.

  I thought about suicide every day during those months. I thought about how I would do it; perhaps I would hang myself with the dog’s leash, or maybe I’d grab every single pill we had in the cabinet and drown them with a couple shots of tequila. I wanted to do something, anything to stop the pain.

  But I finally gave in and realized that I couldn’t climb out of the hole by myself, and I had come to accept that I would continue to take medication for the rest of my life. I would never be off medication. I continued to see my therapist, not every week or even every month, but whenever I hit a road block and needed someone to help me talk my way through it. Sometimes I had bad days, sometimes bad weeks, but the medication enabled me to cope, to see a way out and over those times. I was not ashamed of any of this.

  I knew so many people who were afraid that if they took medication or even agreed to see a therapist that they were in some way admitting failure or defeat. Or they had been told by their boyfriend or their mother or their best friend that they should buck up and get over it, and that asking for help was a sign of weakness. Well then, let me be weak. Let me be a failure. Because being over here on this side, where I could see and think clearly, where I was happy to greet my child in the morning, where I could logically maneuver my way over tiny obstacles that would have previously been the end of the world, over here being a failure was a hell of a lot more enjoyable than the constant misery of suffering alone.

  All of this is to say that I was a success story. I was a victory for the mental health profession. And despite everything that it would say about me and who I was to have to ask for help, I did it. And here was this crazy woman in the Utah desert who admitted and accepted all of those horrible things about herself and in doing so found a better life.

  That night as Jon and I got Leta ready for bed we went through the routine in silence as both of us rolled around thoughts of my sister’s neighbor in our heads.

  “You know, this lotion,” I said to him as we rubbed a lavender-scented moisturizer into the folds of her chubby legs, “it reminds me of the hospital and the four days I spent there.”

  He looked up at me immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We can buy a different lotion if this is too painful for you.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s actually a great memory. You would come to visit me, and whenever you brought Leta she smelled exactly like this. I’d scoop her out of the stroller and press my nose against her forehead so that I would remember that smell after you took her home.”

  “You remember that?” he asked.

  Yeah, I remembered that. I remembered how they came to see me every day. I remembered how neither of them gave up on me.

  I didn’t wash my hands after putting the lotion on Leta’s body, and after we put her to bed and for the rest of the night I would sneak quick sniffs of my hands. I realized that this smell would always remind me of Life.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my agent, Betsy Lerner, who had no idea what kind of mess she was getting into when she sent me that letter four years ago. We have been through a war together, with gaping scars to prove it, and it speaks volumes about her character that she didn’t abandon me on the side of the road. Her vision and encouragement are directly responsible for the fact that I survived the act of putting this book together. I owe her a beer.

  Many thanks to my editor, Patrick Price, who has nothing in common with me and yet still laughs at my dick jokes. I feel like he looked directly into my heart and understood me immediately. I am forever indebted to the patience he showed in dealing with such a novice.

  Thanks also go to Radiohead, Beck, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Neko Case, and Wilco, whose music cured some serious bouts of writer’s block.

  I want to thank my daughter’s babysitter, Katey Kendall, for giving me the free time to find the mind that I had lost, and also for being the little sister I never had.

  Thanks to my mother, Linda Hamilton-Oar, The Avon World Sales Leader, she who gave me the brains and the brawn to fight my way through anything. I remember in the hours after my daughter’s birth finally understanding the look I had seen in my mother’s eyes so often, and I thank her for forgiving me for being the reason behind it.

  Thanks to my father, Michael Hamilton, for his ongoing support, especially for being willing to believe that what I went through was real.

  Thanks to the readers of my website who sent me messages of hope during what were the darkest months of my life. Without them I would not be alive.

  Finally, I want to thank the two most important people in my life: Jon Armstrong, my soul mate, he who did not leave me when he had every reason to do so. This book is a love letter to him.

  And Leta, my beautiful daughter, the most stunning force of nature I’ve ever encountered, my muse. I want to thank her for letting me share this story so that others might not feel so alone.

  About the Author

  Heather B. Armstrong was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and went on to major in English at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where she wrote for the unofficial student paper as well as underground music magazines. After enduring the original dot-com boom, Armstrong started her personal site, dooce®, in 2001. She gained notoriety in 2002 when she was fired for her writing on dooce.

  After a brief hiatus during which Armstrong got married, she resumed publishing on dooce and gained popularity with her open, honest posts about depression, parenting, and living in Utah.

  Armstrong has been featured on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, Nightline, CNN, and the Today show. She has also been profiled and featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

  Armstrong has won numerous awards for her writing on dooce, including Bloggies for Best American Weblog, Best Writing of a Weblog, Weblog of the Year, and Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been selected for Time magazine’s “Top 50 Coolest Websites” as well as included in the Forbes “Top 25 Web Celebrities” list.

  Armstrong resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she loves the summer and loathes the long winters. She shares her home with her husband, her daughter, and two dogs, and continues to post her photographs and writings on dooce.com.

  Photographic Insert

  You can see The Fear in my sleepless eyes.

  I'm already tired and anxious. And I've still got a month to go.
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  My inner landlord is taking control and kicking out my inner renter.

  She just came out of me. All of her. Out. Of. Me.

  Life bombs look innocent when they sleep.

  Surviving despite every misstep from the parents.

  First the human child now THIS? Where's the treat? It's barely worth it.

  Jon questions, for a moment, my nesting instinct.

  That's not a yawn, it's a demand. She would like an Oompa Loompa NOW.

  The results of my nesting phase. The kitchen, not the kid. The kid was a result of a brain malfunction.

  Swallowed by the baby carrier.

  If she's gonna stay, I'll learn to deal with it. Slowly and begrudgingly.

  Manicure courtesy of nerd father who insisted on using the headlamp. It didn't help.

  Mama, I love you. Even if I keep you up all night and refuse to be held.

  The frog baby asleep. Time for that shot of tequila.

  Jon and his "son."

  She appears to enjoy cooler weather. She's definitely not my child.

  First Halloween! And Mommy's no longer throwing things at Daddy!

  If your parents didn't sleep for six straight months they'd look like this, too.