Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Censorship and Sleep

I did something recently that I have never done (on here) before.  I went back through Le Blog and read every single post since April 2009 and censored myself.  Not much, but just a little.  There were a few posts that were just a little too pointedly hurtful towards people in my actual life.  A few posts that had just a little more TMI than I was comfortable with.  I clicked those posts over to "Private" and heaved a sigh of relief.

This blog, for all it's "anonymity" (which really means I just don't tell anyone in my "real" life about it), is meant to be a little place where I can unload my brain and feel completely, 100% ME all the time.  Those posts where I was really horrid or really graphic?  Are SO NOT ME.  I might be a catty brat in real life, but I would never say something truly hurtful ever.  And TMI?  Can truly beToo Much Information, even on a journal sort of an "anonymous" blog.  So I censored myself.

But did you see the other part of this process?  The part where I read every single post I have written?  That was very, very revealing.  What a look inside my head over the past 3 1/2 years!  So very much has happened.  I have changed so much.  And remained so much the same.  The dark period before I sought help for PPD?  Really was so dark.  Hindsight has sugar-coated that period for me, allowing me to live life saying "Ok, that sucked, but I'm better! Yay! Rainbows!"  And those months when Laura just wouldn't sleep?  I had completely forgotten about those months.  She is such a good sleeper now, I think I blocked the sleepless nights from my memory.

Those sleepless nights... We are smack in the middle of the wakeful period with Gavin right now.  At 3:30 am, I wonder why he is still awake?  How did my fantastic sleeper of an infant turn into such a midnight monster?  At 3:30 am, I think to myself "Gosh, Laura never did this to me!  She has slept like an angel from the start!"  At 3:30 am, I am clearly not thinking straight.  So last night as I rocked and hushed and diapered and bottled and rocked and hushed some more, I chuckled to myself recalling post after post written in 2010 bemoaning those sleepless night.

It'll get better.  I just know it will.  Because it did before, and it will again.  I will sleep through the night again!  It will be glorious, and I will promptly forget the horrors of the midnight monster.