I’ve been functioning less and less during this heat wave. There is no break in the heat, and we don’t have air in the center of the house, which is usually where the girls are, so usually where I am. Yesterday I noted that I was possibly having a bipolar flare up. I was moody, could cry at any moment, and when I showed my husband the right way to make the bed (with the top sheet pattern side down) he said, “Well that’s how YOU do it,” and I wanted to scream, “THAT’S HOW MARTHA FUCKING STEWART DOES IT.” But I didn’t. I read Sox on Fox. Perfectly. And then I sent my husband a text from some Miss Manner website — because I’m super fun to live with.

            This morning, however, I was sure of the heat kicking my bipolar disorder into gear. I could barely keep it together with my kids. Feeding them breakfast felt like the end of the world. Keeping them entertained before school? I felt like I needed klonopin to function but I was scared that it would make me too tired to drive so I just got by, minute by minute. Slowly and steadily gaining an ocular headache that reminded me of the good old days of brain surgery recovery. I snapped at my kids, a lot. I dropped Kid 1 off at school and then sobbed the entire way home, blinking tightly so I could see through my tears, singing “Let It Go” on refuckingpeat. 

            Here’s what I was trying to let go: I had postpartum depression from December 2020 to July 2021. I wanted to kill Kid 2. For eight months. Finally I got on lithium, went to an outpatient program – got the help I desperately needed. But what this bipolar flare has brought me, other than the normal bipolary stuff of mixed moods, rapid cycling and barley being able to accomplish one thing, is what I’m calling Postpartum Depression Aftershocks. It’s when I can’t stop thinking about the eight worst months of my life when I was thinking like a monster. I’m a vegetarian, I take spiders out of doors, but I wanted my daughter gone. I’ve never really forgiven myself for feeling that way, or how I talked about it non stop and begged my husband to turn back time or give her up for adoption. I put him through hell and now it’s all back, fresh in my mind. I remember little details I thought I had forgotten, I scroll through pictures taken in that 8 months and have no idea how I wanted that girl gone, she’s so precious and wonderful, but I remember that I definitely did. I can’t stop thinking, “You are sick. You are a monster. You don’t deserve love.” I keep thinking, “It’s going to come back, maybe it’s coming back now, you’re not going to be able to be a help to your partner at all. Dead weight.”

            I’m sitting alone in the dark, hoping my meds kick in. My husband has the girls. But I have to make dinner, and the thought of getting out of this bed and stepping onto the floor – my brain thundering with every time I put my foot down as I walk? It makes me want to cry.

            I am sick. I am reliving sickness. 

            Three more days of heat and then they say, it breaks. Three more days of an unstable mood, unstable mind, and a brain that wants to kill me. 

            Send help.