Wish I Was Dead (Page 1)

I don't know where to start but I have to talk about this somewhere and would rather do it annoynmously. I am 34, a professional woman, happily married and in my first pregnancy. I know I have no right to be depressed but I simply cannot help myself. I am so angry and upset and unhappy and anxious that sometimes I can barely funtion.

I have never been the kind of woman who felt she had to have children to be happy. In fact, I have been married for 10 years to a wonderful man and we are very happy together. I have a good career and make good money and for years thought I didn't want any kids. Then in 1999 my Mother died suddenly. I was very close to her and missed her horribly. I felt abandoned and lost without her guidence and love. No matter how wonderful my husband was, it wasn't the same. It's true that no one ever loves you as much and as unconditionally as your mother.

From then on I began to fear losing other people in my life that I loved. I also feared being old and alone with no one to care for me if I lost my husband. I think that was what made me first consider the possibility of having children. I began to get close to my aunt, my mother's older sister, and looked to her for the guidence and love I once got from my mother. We were very close but our views on some thing differed considerably, including the idea of having children.

As I reached my 30s, my aunt began to tell me I would be sorry if I never had kids. (The implications being that I would wind up old and alone just as I feared.) Though I still wasn't entirely sold on the idea, my husband and I decided to throw away the birth control and give it a try.

Then, this March, I discovered I was pregnant. I didn't know how to feel about it and spent several nights crying and soul searching. Then I had a miscarriage and felt worse than before. I was sure it was my fault I had lost the baby and my husband and I were suddenly eager to get pregnant again.

I got pregnant again almost at once and at first I was very happy. I remember the rush of relief and joy when the first ultrasound showed the baby was alive and well, wiggling inside me. I was certain I would have a little girl--a girl I could share everything with. A little girl I could feel close to and love. I just knew that I could recreate the wonderful relationship I'd had with my own mother. I had some ups and downs but mostly I was very happy about the pregnancy.

Then, two weeks ago we had another ultrasound. The baby still looked fine and healthy but the ultrasound tech told us something I didn't want to hear--that the baby was a boy. I went home and spent the entire night crying. I didn't want a rowdy, hyper little boy. I wanted a sweet little girl I could have a mother-duaghter relationship with. I wanted what I felt I had been promised by my aunt who told me that I would love having children the way she had.

In the weeks that have followed I have grown more or less used to the idea of having a boy but the bouts of depression I am experiancing have never gone away. They have gotten worse and more frequent. I can't seem to think of anything positive about this pregnancy and what is to follow. All I can imagine are painful labor, sleepless nights, dirty diapers, and the inevitable loss of freedome and closeness that my husband and I have enjoyed.

OF course everyone else in my family is overjoyed that I am pregnant. My husband can't wait to be a daddy and my aunt is positively gleeful about my increasingly gravid state. I am the only one who feels like I may have made a serious mistake, one that will follow me the rest of my life. I fell like I will never be free again, like nothing in my life will ever be the same. This baby is like a tumor growing inside me, sapping all my energy, making me sick and fat and sad.

I feel angry and betrayed, especially by my aunt. I know she just wanted another baby in the family and I was the only female young enough to have one. I feel that she lied to me in order to get this baby born. I can't trust her anymore and I feel I have lost the only older female I could talk to or turn to for advice.

I feel angry at my mother all over again for dying and leaving me alone at a time when I need her so desperately. Who can I tell these feelings to? Who can undertand how unhappy I am at a time that I know is supposed to be the happiest time of my life? I have told my husband some of this and though he is sweet and understanding, I can see the horror in his eyes when I talk about not wanting the baby. About just wanting to go back to the way things were before. We were so happy and contented. How could I have been foolish enough to think that adding another person to that equation could make it better instead of worse?

Of course I have horrible feelings of shame for thinking this way. What is wrong with me? Why am I so selfish and such a horrible person? Why can't I just be happy like everyone else around me? Everyone can't wait until the baby comes out but I just want to go back in time and undo the whole thing. I feel so bad for this baby--he didn't ask to be concieved, didn't ask to be born. None if this is his fault--it's all mine. I let bad advice and a fear of being alone push me into a bad descision. NOw I am thinking that if this is the price of not being alone, it is too high to pay. But it's too late now, of course. Like in the poem by Sylvia Plath : I've boarded the train. There's no getting off.

Of course if anyone bothers to read this to the end they will wonder if I am getting help. Yes, of course. I have a meeting with a therapist next Tuesday. But I swear to GOd I don't know if I can make it. For the first time in my life since my melodramatic adolescence I am beginning to see the attraction of suicide. I see nothing in my future but a blank corridor of depression and drudgery. I don't see how I can be a good mother feeling this way. This baby would be better off with someone else who wanted and loved it.

I know there are so many women out there who can't have children and want one so badly. Or girls who are pregnant and have the right to feel the way I do--that the baby will steal their lives because they haven't had the chance to go to college or have a career yet. I have no such excuse. I must admit to being a lazy, selfish, horrible excuse for a human being. One who doesn't want a baby she knowingly made because she is afraid it will ruin her comfortable routines and change her life forever.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know if it helped to write this out but I had to try something. I have been crying off and on for hours at a time for the last few days. I have no joy anymore. I have no creativity. I write books as a hobby and have had several published but since I have been pregnant, I am completely blocked even from my own imagination. I can't write and I know I will have no time once the baby is born so I think I'll have to give it up. I love to write but I need quiet and concentration to do it--not possible with a new baby. Just another thing this baby is taking from me that I don't want to lose.

I have no escape except to try and forget I am pregnant and pretend none of this is happening--but I can't always do that. Friends and relatives have started giving me baby clothes and furniture. These things sit in my bedroom, staring at me like a pack of monsters waiting to pounce. I can almost hear them laughing--their glee just like my aunt's, saying, "Look what we trapped you into! All we had to do was feed you a few lies about emotional security and you bought it like a bad insurance policy that will never pay off. And now you're stuck with it forever!"

I just want my life to go back to the way it was. I was so happy. My husband and i almost never fought. We did things at the spur of the moment and took long, happy, restful vacations. I could write whenever I wanted to and I wasn't an emotional wreck. Now I am sick and miserable and regretting this descision with all my heart but there is nothing I can do about it. I am stuck. Why didn't I just take a heavy weight and put it around my neck and jump into a river? I would have accomplished the same exact thing.

I WISH I WAS DEAD.