My Depression & Subsequent Realization

My depression was partially a good, long and hard look at true reality and being totally petrified, horrified, disgusted by it ...  But also ... lacking the capacity to see solutions, failing to see the positivity in the world, letting the 'bad stuff' take center stage.  A good hard look turned into an endless spiral of despair ...

'Moral relativity' was something I said many times during my conversations with my therapist.  That is something I couldn't live with during the worst of my breakdown two years ago.

I couldn't work out how to be happy in a world where so many suffer.  Day it and day out.  I couldn't fathom being happy KNOWING there were children being abused everywhere I looked.  I applied statistics to my surroundings.  I imagined the worst case scenarios, I looked around guessing which families were abusive ...

I spiraled and spiraled out of control ... and then I had to try to shut it down.

I feared for my child.  I feared for other children.  I feared for the planet.  I feared for the world.

I literally worried myself sick.  I stopped being a productive person.  I stopped being useful.  

And now I realise, to my continued despair, that my depression is hurting those that I'm despairing for - my children, my own family and myself.  By indirect extension, the world at large.

So, now I'm trying TRYING so so hard, not to get caught up in the web of depression and despair anymore.  It's a fight I'm waging every day and night.  

I don't want to be selfish anymore.  I suffered; it's over.  Others suffer, but by continuing to suffer for them is NOT going to help them.

It's good to take good hard looks, but it's as important to be able to know when to stop looking and start doing - beginning with oneself.  If you can't make yourself feel better, how can you make anyone else ?!?!?!?!??!?!??? 

Being happy is not selfish.

The Pitiful Playground

The park of 'Bozky Nebozky' (Bozena the pitiful) - a name we kids gave this park that was named after a famous Czech child book author Bozena Nemcova.  

How uncanny.

Dark, rusty and cold.  Smelling faintly of urine.  

Pieces of broken and rusted-through metal sticking out in angry, sad bits; looking like mouths with shattered teeth, like wounds that won't heal.  

Parts missing.  Parts stolen and sold as scrap metal. 

Dismantled dreams.

That's how I remember this playground, mostly.  

The intention was to be a warm, fun filled place for imagination, games and laughter.  And for a while it was.  Then it turned into wasteland.  

The potential is almost surprising, the waste of it, heart wrenching. 

Towards the end, the stairs didn't lead anywhere, the rails were missing or rusted through - instead of serving as safety measure, it's rusty broken bits threatening to cut through a little palm, the harsh surface scraping a little knee ...  

The rocket, so hopefully pointing to the sky turned into a scary looming dark hole filled with smell of urine, filled with trash ... 

Eerily, like my childhood, what started out as a warm, hopeful, safe place, ended up being a scary, sad and cold hole ...

That cold spot is still within me, with its rusty edges, with its shame, its broken dreams.  Sometimes the cold sharp metal cuts me when I least expect it.  And then there is the absurd beauty and a hint of warmth ... those things that I try to hold on to.: