How I met you

Our newborn was just a few days old when close friends came to visit. Among them was an old couple from church. They brought clothes for our baby girl and a pink blanket they’d crocheted by hand. They were sweet and true, giving us all that they could in that moment, asking for nothing in return.

That day I was wearing an old green sweater. It didn’t belong to me and I didn’t care where it came from, because it was the only thing I’d found in my closet that was wider than my body. I received their gifts and let them hold me, but my heart was somewhere else.

The old couple asked how I was doing, if the baby blues had gotten to me. I blinked back a blank stare. The baby blues. Was that what this was? Feeling feeble and frail, exposed and contrite, like I was wearing an ugly sweater and everyone could see it.

After they left, the words clung. I searched baby blues and read a news story about a young mother — she’d dropped off her baby at a daycare one morning and then she drove off a bridge to end her life. In the weeks that followed, I thought about her often. Reality felt fickle, so I was extra careful.

Had you asked me then how I was feeling, I would’ve told you that I was great. I would’ve held my breath, like I was underwater, and I’d let the screams bubble away.

***

Months later, I started Bluish and told a story about a new mother and her baby blues. I didn’t tell my friends though, I only told the internet. And I told it in the only way I knew how, dabbling melancholy in a mix of good news… it was hard to say if it was a sad story or a happy one.

But the internet understood.

(And that’s how I met you.)