On: Mental Health
Authors note: originally this was titled “Motherhood”
I am finally on my own, in my own house, with my own job, getting my own master’s degree. Everything is wonderful, I just can’t sleep at night.
I call the doctor for help. He recommends that I begin taking a pill on the nights that I can’t sleep.
“It’s a wonderous new dream drug that I give to many of my patients who have trouble sleeping,” he says, “Just… don’t Google it.”
I pick up the bottle of sleeping pills from the pharmacy. That night, I shake one out onto my palm. It is small and peachy-orange, a tiny powder dime. I have never seen a tinier item. It is small enough to slide through the end of a pencil sharpener, yet large enough to knock me unconscious by 8:30 p.m. sharp.
The pill graces me with twelve hours of uninterrupted, blank, black sleep. It seems that there is no time between when I close my eyes and when I open them the next morning. I haven’t slept that well since middle school. The pill seems too good to be true, like an off button that I can push.
In a dreamy, sleepy haze the next morning, I do Google it. According to the Internet, the pill is used to treat insomnia and schizophrenia, neither of which I am aware that I have.
“Doctor, am I crazy?” I ask him during our next visit. “Honestly, that would be the least of my worries these days.”
He chuckles and, thankfully, does not scold me for looking up The Pill.
“In small doses the medicine will put you to sleep, while also treating the depression symptoms that you have. For instance, it helps with ruminating thoughts. In large doses, it treats other mental illnesses like schizophrenia.”
For the next few nights, I try to sleep naturally to no avail. I toss and turn in my bed, the air conditioner turned down very cold to fight the insidious Floridian nighttime heat. My engagement and wedding recently called off, I have grown somewhat accustomed to spending nights alone. But at my worst, when two or three a.m. roll around, I spiral and worry. I worry that I will die during my dreams from sleep apnea, and no one will come get me. I worry that if I do make it to old age, I will still be sleeping alone in this bed. I worry that my heart will continue to freeze over, becoming more and more bitter with every engagement, wedding and birth announcement I see from the people I love on social media. These worries overtake my rational thoughts, ruminating in my conscious mind just like the doctor said. While I am deeply afraid to take the sleep drug, each night I cave in and continue to take The Pill.
When we speak next, my doctor also prescribes an additional solution - a dog. “They’re simply the best for mental health issues,” he touts.
Fine, throw me in the briar patch, I say to myself. At thirty, I have never raised any type of creature on my own. I welcome the challenge; how hard can it be to take care of something that cannot talk back? The next day, I skip off to purchase myself a new puppy.
This time two years ago, my fiancé was coming home too late, too many times in a row. We had another dog together then, Gator. She was a black-furred monster that bit anyone who wasn’t either of us. I secretly relished how much she loved me and hated everyone else; I remember wishing that my fiancé would act more like her in that way. The day we adopted her, we decided on her name. She was a small ball of black fur, 8 weeks old. Her mouth was strong and triangular, just like an alligator’s. And so, we brought home Gator from the rescue. My fiancé liked that name. It was both dangerous and funny to him.
Back then, I only had trouble sleeping on the nights he didn’t come home.
Ever the southern transplant in Brooklyn, I maintained that a well-fed fiancé was sure to be a happy one. Eager for his arrival home each night, at seven p.m. I would place our two dinner plates on the small marble kitchen table in our small apartment. His favorites were chili, spaghetti Bolognese or a nice piece of steak from the meat market we had purchased on a slow Sunday afternoon.
“I’ll be home soon,” he would say when I texted asking where he was. “I’m with my boss at Belle. Can I order you dinner?” Belle was the bar below his studio office in Soho, downtown Manhattan.
“Dinner is already made.” I would respond via text. I would cry, Gator would stare at me for making weird wailing noises, and then she would cuddle up close.
Towards the end, our relationship began to remind me of a story that my grandma told when she occasionally drank too much iced red wine. It was a story about the early days of her marriage to my grandfather. A small handful of years after they were wed, she had began setting the dinner table on the top of the trash cans in the alleyway behind their house. Because instead of coming home to her and my then-infant mother, he was busy at the bar with other women.
Initially I brushed off my own fiancé’s nighttime absence, believing he was using happy hour to get in close with his bosses and clients. I thought he was doing us both a favor - cementing his future professional success by knocking back Gin and Tonics with his superiors.
Eventually, however, I realized that one of his fellow barflies was a willowy blonde woman I could not compete with, neither in power nor beauty. Shortly before I left my marriage, I discovered that she and my husband were not just drinking together.
The morning that I left for good, I called an Uber to pick me up from our Brooklyn apartment to take me to the airport. I was going home to Florida, where life was certain to be easier, warmer, less neglectful. When the Uber came, my fiancé cried as he helped me into the back seat. I did not cry, as there were no tears left. But when I looked down, I saw that the pleather seat of the Uber’s back seat was covered in someone else’s blood.
“Sir, there is a lot of blood back here,” I said to the Uber driver.
He looked back, confused.
“Oh, I just took the last rider to the hospital.”
Since I left Brooklyn, my fiancé, and that precious Gator-pitbull, I resolved to live a softer life. The kind that the beautiful women on the internet preach at us through their cell phones. I start this new lifestyle choice by buying the doctor-prescribed puppy. The pedigreed puppy I choose is small, innocuous, free of any trauma. I name her Vivienne. Now, I don’t have to involve someone else when picking out her name. Vivienne is gray, small, and snores loud. She is perfect.
When Vivienne coughs, I run to pat her back. When she thirsts, I fill her bowl with filtered water and ice. As her only caregiver, I vow to treat her with the utmost care and kindness. I tell myself this time will be different; I will never allow a man to separate Vivienne from me, like with Gator. She is mine, and only mine. But, this also means that only I am responsible for her care.
When she cries to go potty in the middle of the night, however, I don’t wake up from my chemical pill sleep. Every morning, I wake up and clean her soiled crate, delicately de-germing her precious paws, which have been soaked in urine for hours. Laden with mom guilt, I then vow to give her extra love. We begin the day with extra breakfast in her porcelain bowl. I wonder if it is it enough to give her extra of me during the day, when none of me is available at night.
A year goes by. Over the year, I maintain that Vivienne never experiences any trauma (outside of the horrors of bathtime). I have never let her bleed, not even once. She loves life’s little things the most: sunlight, chasing bugs and choosing the perfect small stick out of our backyard. At her maximum weight of 20 pounds, she has taught me very much about appreciating what one does have.
Before bedtime, Vivienne places her paws on the bottom side rail of my bed and looks at me. She is asking me to put her on the bed. I place her lovingly on top of the pillows, where she sleeps next to my head. I take melatonin now.
Insightful even for your mother 🥰👼🏻
Raw and unfiltered, yet beautiful 🤍