I Don't Even Want a Houseplant [and other motherhood confessions]
I’ve never been great at keeping plants alive. Every year, I eagerly purchase tomatoes and cucumbers, lettuce and green beans. I block off time on a weekend to put them in the ground, optimistic this will be the year I finally make salads and sauces, sides and stews with what I grew in my own backyard. Last year, the tomatoes withered by July and a rabbit ate the entire lettuce plant within 24 hours. We got a few green beans and a cucumber—a successful crop, I suppose, if you compare it to previous summers. But there are only so many side dishes you can make when you harvest two or three green beans at a time.
Indoor plants fare even worse in my house. I’m over-ambitious and under-attentive when it comes to all things botanical. I’ve been told certain plants are “impossible to kill” or “easy to maintain” according to those with green thumbs. They obviously haven’t met me.
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Will medication help? Do I just need to eat better and exercise more? What if I’m just a depressed person? What if nothing can fix me? What if this doesn’t work? What if the side effects are terrible?
The questions swirled in my mind for months. I talked it through with friends, my counselor, my doctor, my husband. No one gave me an easy, prescriptive answer. There are no guarantees when it comes to health—especially mental health. But after too many days of barely getting out of bed, after too many phone calls to my husband asking him to come home from work, after the tiniest incidents pushed me into a pit of dark thoughts I struggled to escape … well, I knew I needed to take the next step.
It’s been a year since I called my doctor and said, “I think I’ll go ahead and try the medication.”
Continue reading this essay at Coffee + Crumbs.
Photo by Ashlee Gadd. Don’t miss the rest of this essay at C+C!
