Introducing...me

I have never written a blog before, but I figured it might be good for me to start writing a journal again. I'm not entirely sure what on earth possessed me to make a public blog, but here I am. The title of my blog is of course taken from the lullabye, my son's favorite (well, I don't actually know if he likes it, but he stops crying when I sing it). I realized that there are so many levels of that song, but obviously, the whole premise of it is to bribe your child to stop crying. I sing the song, knowing that I can't actually buy J anything right now that isn't baby food (or otherwise fairly essential). Not that he really needs anything, we use cloth diapers, have a huge stockpile of wipes, and he's breastfed. We got most of his clothes from my brother-in-law and his wife, since their son is a year older than J, so that worked out well.

I may as well introduce myself a bit, at least. I am 25, live in a suburb of Denver, and work in asthma research. I have a BA and a MS. I am married to my high school sweetheart (C), and we just celebrated 4 years of marriage (9 years together total). We have two dogs, and own our townhome. Our son J is our only child so far, and he was born January 7. I used to do a lot of short fiction writing, but lately I haven't had the time/motivation to do so.

I have struggled with depression for a very long time, since I was at least 12 and maybe a little earlier. When I turned 23 I finally did something about it, and started getting treated. I am on a low dose of sertraline, and generally it does a good job of keeping my depressive cycles on the upward swing, my panic attacks at bay, and my OCD under control (not that it ever got too bad, I wasn't washing my hands repeatedly or anything). One of my clues that I was/am beginning a downward part of the cycle is that I feel the need to compulsively clean. I have been doing this for the last two weeks, hoping and praying that it wasn't going to go any further. Well, it seems that tonight I've made some further downhill progress. I feel...empty inside, lacking motivation to do anything. My temper has had a shorter fuse than it normally does. My heart starts pounding out of nowhere, I can feel the anxiety building and I live in dread of when it will actually burst into a panic attack. The visions that come with the OCD have begun to frequent my days once again. I fortunately never feel like hurting anyone, but I hate this. We've already increased my dosage once since J was born. I desperately want to be normal again, like I was when I first started my meds and everything was under control.

I am going to go clean the kitchen now.