Hello all,
It has been quite the time between my last few posts. We have had a baby, I have a new job and I am feeling all sorts of new feelings.
For context, after having my previous kids, I found myself slipping into a pretty bad spate of depression. Post natal depression affects us men too. No matter how macho we are, there are things that hit us like rocks and knock us down. (although being dragged down is also a nice metaphor, sometimes we don't know how bad we are until someone tells us!)
This time was no different, having a little barnacle attached to my wife was hard again. Sharing her is difficult at the best of times and now splitting her between 3 kids and me seems bad. I found myself irritable, grumpy and generally not too nice to be around. Thankfully having gone through this only 2 years ago, I knew what the red flags were and have since sought some help. I don't know the reason why I am affected, nor do I really know what it is that sets my depression and axiety off. Yet, the difference this time was experience and a deeper knowledge of how God helps me through these irrationally dark times. There were days where I would beat myself up and I didn't accept that it was hard. So all you hardy men with feelings of steel, maybe say to whoever it is that you may take it out on, that you are not ok.
I have also found simply asking someone to listen and not talk while I offload works well. Initially, my wife tried to fix everything but ultimately I knew what I needed to do. I just wanted her to give me a hug and say that ''sometimes, we mess up''. It is funny to me that I have been reading 2 Corinthians and Paul is pretty clear that he has suffered for his faith. He places all glory to God and despite acknowledging the challenges, he see them as opportunities. It is worth saying that Paul matures as his books go on and we see him at different stages of his life. He never had kids though!
I am aware that this is not a focussed post and I am ok with that, I will return to weekly writings about practical and real ways I cope, but what I also want to do with this Blog is share my raw self and have no secrets. We all have our good and bad things so rest assured that unless you are Jesus, life is hard and accepting that can be a good start.
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