I did hit her once; she said “You hit me!” (Yes, yes I did.) “Even EMER isn’t allowed to hit!” (Yes, even your baby sister who is allowed to poo on the carpet isn’t allowed to hit). “I’m TELLING.” (No! No! Please don’t tell! I mean, “Yes, you must tell someone when someone hits you.” I think I handled that rather well.)

Your concerns are valid. Seriously, I’m kinda impressed that you’re actually able to realize that the diaper battle happens because the kid is fucking two, not because someone is a bad parent. Most parents don’t think about the nappy battle at all, and most of the ones who do are certain that either they, and they alone, will have the will power to not do that (sorta like dieting) or that they will just have such phenomenally better kids (or be better parents, not sure which) that their kids won’t do that.

My mom didn’t think about the diaper battle. Or the fact that every single person she’d ever known had had some irritating little habit that they persisted in no matter how many times they said they wouldn’t do it. I got the defense from my parents that I just did things over and over and over again and it frustrated them and the abuse I received from that shouldn’t be held against her. Because I had some thing that I just kept doing even though someone wanted me to stop. My reply was that I wasn’t going to accept “kids are kids” as an excuse for abuse and I certainly wasn’t going to accept “kids are people” as an excuse for abusing kids.

The nappy battle is hard to deal with. If you accept that you’re going to have to deal with it, that sometimes you will be defeated by it, and that it is normal (and far more healthy) to remove yourself from the situation for awhile, you actually have a much better shot at being a decent mother than the people who are convinced it won’t happen and are utterly defeated when it does. Because you can’t be utterly defeated by something you plan for; you can feel really, really tired, in severe need of escape, but so long as you know that you are not less than everyone else, you’ll probably be okay in the longer run.

One day, I hope that being able to tell my six year old, “I’m sorry, I need you to leave me alone for awhile so I can get a hold of my temper. It is not your fault I can’t hold on to my temper, and I need you to go play without me so I don’t do something mean that I really shouldn’t do,” pays off. I’m sure it will pay off far better than just losing it and showing the fairly typical abusive profile of doing something I shouldn’t that hurts and apologizing later and never, ever doing anything to correct my behavior.

I also deal with depression, but that idea that I really am right is more liberating for me. It means that everyone else is delusional and has no freaking idea how to plan for what will happen because they refuse to believe in reality. If you can get past the despair, realize that shit happens, and plan for it with the worst your mind throws at you, it can all be quite empowering. Though sometimes it would be nice to laugh just for the fun of it. I’d be the last person in the world to suggest you give that up.

I’ve been on Zoloft for a year and a half and am currently taking a stab at tapering off the stuff; had a very good year with Zoloft, and a great few months of therapy, but… well, I was still no good at handling great stress. I’ve had enough therapy and read enough that I pretty much know what the problems are and how to fix them, but knowing and practicing are two different things.

So, currently I’m doing a mindfulness meditation program as a pro-active measure that will hopefully help me manage my stress well enough to avoid falling back into a pit of despond. (Knock on wood; so far, so good.) No guarantees, but I think it will serve as the missing link between “knowing” and “doing” by making me able to notice the signs of stress and act to relax (yet another thing that, hilariously, I actually have to practice doing) well before it blows up into a big horrible mess.

Good luck. I’m glad to have found you– it’s great when two of my interests (feminism and dealing with fat) end up on such a great blog together!

But the thing is, I do envision that. I envision myself being filled with barely controllable rage when a two-year-old behaves like a two-year-old. I envision myself sliding down a wall and weeping on the floor for an hour because I cannot get her to keep her socks on. I envision these things because, as someone who suffers from depression, I have been driven to the brink by much, much less than a diapering battle.”

Thank you for saying that. I envision that too, and I’ve never heard anyone say it before, that estimate before ever being a parent. I don’t think the lack of coping ability would exactly be a good parental quality in me if I did ever have children (I don’t plan to).

And as a mother who loves the people her children are turning out to be, I still would caution against having children. It’s the only job in the world, the only relationship in the world you can’t walk away from without being condemned by the world and yourself.

I wanted children because my mother died and I wanted to have a family in the future, not just in the past. I didn’t think about the fact that having children is no guarantee of that and that you can make a family of the people you love, without ties of blood. Also I think my ovaries were whispering subliminal messages to me.

Now about being the child of a seriously depressed mother, I loved her anyway and still miss her. When she died of cancer the only thing that kept me going was knowing that she didn’t have to struggle anymore. Maybe she could have been a “better” mother if she hadn’t had to fight the demons, but we loved each other, very, very much.

It can be so hard to get people to understand all this, especially the bit about rational behaviour zooming out the window. I have some pretty severe anxiety on top of the depression and that makes any kind of therapy and such pretty much moot: when your logic circuits are shut off, all the cognitive behaviour therapy in the world isn’t going to have an effect. Find the root cause of feeling this way, recognise it when it starts up, that kind of thing? There is no root cause. Countless therapists (counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists) have asked “So, why do you think you feel this way?” and my answer is always “I have no reason to feel this way, I just do.” The only one who was of any real help was a nice psychiatrist who said “You know, sometimes people are just depressed or anxious, like being tall or short or having brown or black hair. Medication can help.”

And then I got on the Celexa. For the first three months, I lost my appetite (I lived on a cheese sandwich and some soup each day). (People were congratulating me on my “successful weight loss”, which was not helpful.) Then, the brain fog cleared.

Then … I finally got a diagnosis and treatment for obstructive sleep apnea, something I’ve apparently had since I was a slim child. The doctor tried to sell me on gastric lap banding and I said “Yeah sure whatEVER” and took my CPAP machine home. About 6 months after that, I stopped the Celexa and found things were pretty good. Disturbed sleep’ll really kill your brain. I often wonder how many fat people who have sleep apnea are still suffering its myriad effects because the doctor keeps telling them they’ll stop snoring if they lose weight, which is simply not true in most cases.

Then my brain had a re-lapse (“Oh no! What’s all this happiness stuff!?”) and I’m considering taking the pills again.