Tall Tales

I can't believe it's not better

As if being sucked down into the plughole of depression isn't bad enough, you know what makes it one fuck of a lot worse? Explaining it to your offspring. And no, I don't mean giving them some deep psychological insight into the workings of the overloaded mind. I mean saying something, anything, to both explain and brush off the fact that you are sobbing into the margarine tub as you knock up the breakfast.
In short, it's a bastard. Kraken Junior, my four year old, has heard every crappy excuse this side of an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show. As far as she's concerned my tears are my instant retort to anything from the stumping of toes to the fact that I can't find a pen. And fuck knows what she must think of my dexterity thanks to my well-worn excuse of having hurt my finger. She probably thinks I've got some unnatural relationship with a cheese grater or a fetish for paper cuts.
And yeah, there have been times when I've explained that mam is sad and that's why she has snot pooling on her chin. In my experience - and shit knows, I've had a lot of it - the trick has been to couch this in terms that only a four year old kraken can understand. I've recalled a time when she lost her teddy or - hysterically, I admit - walked into a door and then tell her that I'm going through something similar because that's just life. 
The thing is, all of this reasoning and excusing and bare faced lying boils down to the same thing; the fear that lurks in every depressive's breast, that witnessing their illness, panic, sadness and general barkingness will scar their kids for life. I've read enough tales about kids recalling little about their childhood other than their mother never getting out of bed or their father being wild eyed with mental illness. I'll be buggered if I want Kraken Junior to end up writing Mis-Lit too. That, though, is just bloody fabulous in theory. The practice it's a thousand times knottier.
I recall being in a psych unit after a particularly difficult weekend and having to explain what had happened to a couple of counsellors. Fair play, I hung on in there well until one of them asked me about Kraken Junior. I explained that she hadn't witnessed any of my distress as she'd been out cold at the time but one supercillious fuck still told me that this was no environment for a child to live in. Thank Christ Conjugal Kraken was there. He came in handy by wrestling me back into my chair. That's because even in my darkest moments I have done everything and anything to protect Kraken Junior from the reality and I've done a fucking good job of it too. 
Course, as I recover there are far fewer tears and as far as Kraken Junior is concerned mam's gotten better at handling that new fangled cheese grater. I don't hurt my fingers or toes half as much these days. Mind you, the margarine is occasionally runnier than it should be.