"Make a blog. You should totally write a blog."
This is the statement made regularly by a friend of mine who writes a blog about her family. It's very nice. My husband and I like to read it. Her kids are darling and the stories she shares are entertaining, heartwarming and inspiring. I aspire to be like this woman.
She is a mom and now I am a mom. I had a baby in December, and she is six months old now. I guess now that I'm a mom, my friend thinks that my own friends and family would like to read about the daily adventures of our family. Until now, though, I have not created any sort of on-line journal. And this journal is not really supposed to be about my my family.
This blog is about my anxiety. About the overwhelming worry that sometimes plagues me. That often plagues me. It is about the intrusive thoughts that I truly believed I had a handle on. That I believed I would never be plagued by again. But here I am, six months into motherhood and they are back. Generalized Anxiety Disorder with "some" Panic Disorder (this was my official diagnosis from my general practitioner) rears it's ugly head again.
There are two reasons why I never started a blog in the past. The first one is simple: I questioned whether my verbal output was worthy of the attention of others. I still do. Who am I to assume someone else would be interested in the contents of my head? What makes my verbal diarrhea any more worthy of attention than anyone else's? This is amusing because, as I indicated earlier, I find my friend's blog quite enjoyable to read. As is often the case, this perception of my own value has a lot to do with confidence and peace of mind, and less to do with the reality of a potential audience. In this day and age, most blogs are really for the loved ones of their authors, a modern day "Christmas letter" that is published on a more regular basis. They are not meant to be scrutinized and worried over. But then again, I scrutinize and worry over pretty much everything when I'm "not at my best".
The second reason that I never started a blog until now - a blog related to my family, that is - is because I'm so afraid of not being able to present the "right" picture of family life. The appropriate activities, thoughts, feelings and insights of a new mom. A week after my daughter was born, my husband bought me a journal so that I could write in it each night and chronicle her development. I started to do this nightly, but began generating entries less often when the demands of new motherhood and infant care interfered. No biggee...to be distracted from not-absolutely-necessary tasks while caring for a newborn is pretty standard. What wasn't standard, however, was worrying that what I was writing in the journal wasn't "right". I worried that the stories weren't positive enough, that I didn't appear happy enough through the prose. That if my daughter read the entries someday she wouldn't feel loved enough because she might doubt my excitement for infant care. It didn't matter that, at times, I realized it's okay to be uncertain, grumpy, delerious-with-lack-of-sleep when learning to mother a new baby. That's the point. Anxiety, when it's bad, pretty much paralyzes. It obliterates perspective and leaves the affected individual incapable of looking at the big picture. All that is visible is the particular intrusive thought or obsession that the negativity machine is currently generating.
And that, I suppose, is why I'm really here. I'm looking for an outlet. A place to release some of the worry and negativity that I've claimed is so plaguing. I've journaled in the past and found it pretty therapeutic. But I'm feeling differently now. I have so many thoughts jumping in and out of my brain that it's hard to keep up with them. And I type faster than I write. So I guess I'll give blogging a whirl.
I'm not sure how long I'll keep this up. It feels pretty good to get some of these thoughts out, so maybe I'll do it for a while. I don't really plan on telling anyone about this blog so maybe no one will read it. Maybe some weirdo who's up late and trolls the internet for other weirdos will read it. Did I just insult someone? Did I just insult you, reader? Did I just insult myself? I don't know...I didn't really mean to. But I guess I don't really care. I just need to get some of this stuff off my chest.
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