#ForMiriam

That could have been me...that could have been me....that could have been me.

This is my new earworm -- what has been playing through my mind like a broken record ever since I heard the news of Miriam.

Selfish?  Not meant to be -- it's just that it was a slam to the gut -- a reminder that I was so close to a similar act, and not so long ago.

Not many people know how bad postpartum depression really got for me.  And only a handful of those know that on December 11, 2009 I was driving by myself on a rural highway, and came seconds away from turning my car directly into the path of an oncoming 16-wheel tractor trailer, fully loaded and barreling my way.

It seemed like the only way to take the pain away -- and not even from me, but from those I loved.  I truly believed that the act of crashing into something huge and metal and fatal would at least eventually bring peace to all of the people who cared about me and suffered as I tried to claw out of the muck and dreck of a perinatal mood anxiety disorder.

For some reason, I pulled to the side of the road instead.  And I'll never really know why I turned right instead of left.  But I came scarily close to going the other way.

I was one of the lucky ones -- my husband, my parents, my friends, my doctor, even my pediatrician realized that I wasn't "me".  I had access immediately to excellent therapy and medication and help -- the real, true kind of help of not being judged, of sitting with me and cleaning my house and being there when I was with my children -- because when I thought about being alone with them the panic would rise from my soul and be stuck in my throat like a lump that physically hurt and I thought it would choke all of the air from me.

When those who loved me wanted to understand how I really, truly felt, the only way I could explain was that I was trapped under a swamp or a murky lake -- stuck in the weeds and covered in algae, moored in the mud and the suck and unable to fight my way to the surface, to sunshine, to oxygen, to light, to life.  Buried alive.  It hurt to see even a spark of realization of how bad it was in their eyes.  Hurt to not be the person I was to them 'before.'

It was a dark place, and a scary one.  I had to learn to not trust my own mind for a while, because my mind was telling me terrible things. 

The way back to life once I did break the surface of that water is a long story and one for another time.  For now, For Miriam, I had to share the deep dark truth and let it out into the Universe -- because that could have been me.  That could have been me.  But it was Miriam.

I'm so sorry she didn't get to turn right instead of left, too.