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This is the first-hand story of a woman struggling with postpartum depression. She shares how it took her, "Five years. It took five years of convincing, cajoling, and near pleading for me to swallow a pill..."

 

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I grew up with a fear of mental illness and a deep suspicion of psychiatric drugs. Which is why it took a collective five years of persuasion by my caring therapists to swallow that little pill.

Flash forward to eight years later, when I’d gone cold turkey off those meds, popped out a baby, and was a manic mess. Things unraveled fast and there I was checking into the psychiatric hospital in the middle of the night, stumbling along behind a staff. 

As we rounded the massive, high-ceilinged main room, a woman sat silently in a chair while another woman bustled softly nearby, and a few staff members chatted behind the desk. The bustling woman asked something like, “Do you want to go back to bed now, Lin?” The woman in the chair made a few small motions in response. Their conversation continued that way, the bustling woman speaking and the woman in the chair making tiny gestures in reply. 

I shrank away from the woman in the chair. She must be a patient….like me. But I wasn’t like her, my manic brain insisted. I’d talk only to the staff. I then proceeded to initiate a loud, too-friendly conversation with the women behind the desk. THEY were who I could relate to, after all. Not this strange woman who sat silent and unblinking in the middle of the night. 

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Perfection Anonymous