The Plate on the Floor

There’s a lot of talk about postpartum depression right now. And, unfortunately, there are also a lot of comments from people insisting that postpartum depression, or postpartum psychosis, isn’t real.

I’m not interested in talking about the current court case. I’m not interested in arguing with strangers on the internet. But I do want to talk about something I do know: what postpartum depression looked like for me.

I’ve had three pregnancies and four kids, because apparently I enjoy chaos. Of all three pregnancies, my worst experience with postpartum depression came after my second child, Freddie.

There were plenty of outside things that probably contributed. We had a new baby and a toddler. Money was tight. Life was exhausting. We were trying to figure out why I couldn’t breastfeed, spending thousands of dollars on appointments and medications, while also hearing people tell me I was faking it. That I was selfish.

But when I think about that period of my life, the thing I remember most clearly is food.

I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the 90s, when skinny was practically a personality trait. There was always some message telling me what my body should look like, what I should eat, and what I should feel guilty about.

So when postpartum depression came for me in 2014/2015, it found a pretty well-worn path.

When I wanted to eat, I didn’t.

When I made myself a portion, I saved most of it for later.

When I was alone and knew I had to eat, I took a bite.

Then it became about serving myself.

And eventually, somehow, it became about whether I deserved the food at all.

There was a plate in our house that became part of this. It was a cheap dollar-section Target plate I had bought in college. It was ugly. It was the worst plate we owned.

That was the plate I decided I deserved.

I stopped eating at the table.

Instead, I would put that ugly plate on the floor and take food from the stove and put it onto the plate. I would let it splatter. I would make it look messy and unappetizing. Then I would sit on the floor and eat there because, in my mind, that was where I belonged.

Eventually, even the plate felt like too much.

I remember thinking that maybe I shouldn’t use one at all. Maybe I should just eat directly off the floor, like a dog. And if the dog got to the food before I did, then I guess that was what I deserved.

I know how horrible that sounds.

What scares me now is that it didn’t feel horrible then.

It felt logical.

That’s one of the things I wish people understood about depression. It doesn’t always look like lying in bed crying. Sometimes you are taking care of your kids, going to work, answering the phone, doing the dishes, and somehow your brain has quietly convinced you that you are not worthy of sitting at the table.

That you belong on the floor.

I wish I could tell you exactly what made it better.

I can’t.

It wasn’t one big moment. There wasn’t a switch that flipped. I think I just slowly started finding my way back to myself.

Life kept moving. My kids kept growing. I kept going. There were years when I was working 18-plus-hour days because we needed the money for medical bills. That certainly wasn’t a healthy solution to anything, but it was part of the strange, messy circumstances of that time. Somehow, in the middle of all of it, I started coming back to myself.

Little by little, I ate.

I served myself food.

I started sitting at the table again.

I stopped saving every bite for some imaginary future in which I might finally deserve it.

Eventually, the plate went back into the cabinet.

Now, it’s just a stupid little dollar-store plate.

But I still know what it meant.

It reminds me that postpartum depression was real. It reminds me that it doesn’t always look the way people expect it to look. And it reminds me how frighteningly easy it is for depression to take all of the things you already believe about yourself and turn the volume all the way up.

I didn’t deserve that plate on the floor.

I didn’t deserve to eat like a dog.

I deserved dinner.

I deserved the table.

I deserved help.

I deserved kindness.

I deserved to eat without having to prove that I was worthy of it first.

And if you’re a new mother who is struggling in a way that doesn’t look like anyone else’s version of postpartum depression, I hope you know this:

Maybe that’s what I know now. We all deserve a better plate.