Facing Life After the Post Partum

You ever have those times in your life when you need a break? Need to step away from the everyday, the chaotic life around you and even your friends?
Mine is going on two months now.
It's not that I don't love anyone, or appreciate them or want them in my life. It's that I need to focus on me, my son and get centered. Life spun out of control for me. One day I was fine, running a million errands, writing my brains out, loving my 6 month old son, and looking for new ways to start building on to my career and life, when out of no where the rug was ripped from under my feet and I was curled up in bed, visiting the Emergency Room with no warning at all.
The other day I ran into one of my old friends walking down the street. I was glad to see her, glad to say hi, glad to talk about what everyone was up to, but the question was on her mind. With every "So what have you been up to," and "How are things going" was the underlining question she was dying but to afraid to ask me-"What happened to you" or "How are you feeling?" I'm not sure why people feel as if they have to tiptoe around it. I had (have) postpartum. It's a simple as that. I don't hate my son. I don't regret being a mom. And I'm not trying to isolate myself from the world, okay maybe just a little bit. But it's seeing my friend and watching her smiling face scrunch into a concerned forehead that's analyzing what I'm saying and how I'm acting to decipher if I'm okay now, that keeps me from picking up the phone or answering the everlasting emails about getting together with everyone.
In my friends defense they were blindsided. One day I was attending our monthly dinners, meeting my other mom friend for lunch and walking the boards everyday and the next I wasn't talking to them in person, or anyway other than a quick text telling them I was having issues and was going away for a bit. The truth. I don't know why I haven't picked up the phone. The fact is I'm still not ready. I'm still a bit sad and I'm still anxious. I'm sad that my family isn't closer, that my husband works so much, that I'm lonely and I'm nervous that everything I do as a mother is incorrect.
But you wouldn't know that if you met me. I seem calm, cool, collective and funny-okay well maybe not calm or collective-but I am funny (kudos to self). And I think I do a fairly good job of fooling myself too.
Upon the third day of a random headache and vision blurs that wouldn't go away, the doctor in the Emergency Room told me my body was under extreme exhaustion and in turn was shutting down.
"Do you have anyone you could call to stay with you and the baby for a few days so that you can rest your body and try to relax?"
Niagara Falls has never poured as hard as I did when the doctor uttered these words.
My mom and entire family was 5 hours away, my husbands were 3 and everyone else had jobs, commitments-lives! There was no one to call, and this had been my anxiety from day one.
My husband rearranged his schedule so that he was home with me during the day and working later at night, after the baby and myself had been put to sleep.
Two days after that fateful ER visit I went back to my regular doctor who had now done X-ray test, Eye tests and was even about to check my heart for an arrhythmia when he pulled me into his office and told me he thought I was under going postpartum.
I thought he was crazy. He thought I needed Prozac and Xantax.
But the pill popping started making things a little clearer. I did have friends and a wonderful neighbor that could watch my son from time to time, so I wasn't alone in the true essence of the word-I just felt like I was. My family told me they thought something was wrong and were about to confront me, my mother-in-law admitted that she understood what the doctor was talking about and my husband practically got down on his knees and thanked heaven that someone besides him was seeing his sane wife a now insane wreck-not the smiling happy mother she was portraying on the street.
After that I went on what seems like a world wind vacation. I took my son and went to my mothers for a week, met my husband in the Poconos to be with my his family for a week, turned around and went to Virginia to visit my cousin with my family again for a week, left for the Hampton's with my girlfriend for a weekend and then went to Saratoga to be with my husband's family once again. With my son, my dog and several bags in tow I traveled all around getting help when I needed it and a few extra hours of sleep from time to time.
Now that I'm back, settling into a routine and establishing a life that balances my son's needs with my own, I feel placed. That sounds like such a strange term, but it's all I can use to describe myself now. Placed.
But I still need my space. Orally I might have a lot to say and much that I need to express, but currently I have nothing to say.
And until I can continue to get my life straight I can't say much at all.