I'm too old to have an identity crisis.

I am not the person I used to be.

As the months pass, and I increasingly throw off the effects of the postpartum depression I suffered through for so long, I keep finding that certain things about me are different.

This isn't the sort of change that occurs when you grow after going through some extreme experience. No, this feels more like something inside me has broken. It's hard to put into words. It's more a feeling that something inside just isn't right, just isn't the way it used to be.

It's easier to point out the very real and quantifiable changes in my abilities. For instance, my short term memory is shot. I just can't keep hold of things anymore. My husband will say something, I'll answer him, and within seconds I've completely forgotten the conversation. He'll refer to it, and I'll look at him blankly, without that faintest idea what he's talking about, absolutely convinced the conversation never happened. Sometimes I'll remember it later; more often it's just gone forever.

I can't focus and concentrate anymore. My attention is scattered. I find myself distracted by the slightest things, to the point that some days I have a hard time getting anything accomplished. I've always had a tendency to distractibility - it's a family joke the way I can lose my train of thought in the middle of a sentence - but that always happened to me because there was so much happening inside my head, so many things to think about it, so many ideas to share, that they'd stumble over one another on their way out. Now, the distractions are external, a matter of, "Look! Something shiny!" followed by a complete loss of whatever I was thinking before the distraction.

Things that used to be so easy before, are so difficult now. I can't think and reason like I did. I don't feel like my IQ has dropped; it's more like I just can't access certain abilities that used to be right there, ready to hand without even trying.

Not all the changes have been negative. I've never had such an easy time keeping the house clean. It's as if, before, my internal world was so rich and varied that it was hard to focus on the outside world. Now, that inner landscape has lost a lot of its color and interest. Housework has become merely something to get through, not an annoying divergence of my attention and energy.

Not that I have much energy. It's not as debilitating as it was a year ago, but there is a marked difference between good days and bad days. There are some days that I just can't pull myself together at all. Those days are always first characterized by a drop in my energy levels.

I'm not the person I used to be. I've really changed, and I don't know who I am now. I'm having to relearn my identity, what I'm good at and what I can't do. I'm having to reevaluate the map of my personality and that's not an easy thing.

That's why I haven't been blogging. Partly because I like to present a consistent picture of myself to the outside world, and it's hard to do that when you don't know who you are anymore. Partly because writing is one of those things that's gotten difficult. Finding the right words isn't hard, but taking ideas and verbalizing them enough to myself to take the next step into putting them on paper is very hard.

This is also not a journey that lends itself well to public display. I feel reluctant to put this out there for whoever meanders by. So, I'm going to stop blogging for awhile. I don't know yet what I want to do over the long run, so I won't be taking down the blog, but I don't know if I'll want to come back to this later on. If I go, I won't go without saying goodbye though. I promise.

Good luck to all of you! You'll probably see me commenting every now and there on your blogs. But I won't be posting here for awhile.