what the heck!

Well now. I have to ponder on going to the Indian Festival in Virginia. My incestuous brother will be there with his refusal to acknowledge he was responsible and that he thought that i liked it. My sister's son will be there who told me to go ahead and commit suicide no one would miss me and my sister will probably be there with her lying gossiping slanderous tongue. She and my mother gossiped about me behind my back and said they did not believe i had been raped in spite of the fact that my mother eavesdropped on every word i told two detectives who interviewed me. She heard every word and had no word of comfort for me. When i finally told my sister about the incest a couple of years ago, i was desperately in need of comfort. My brother had spent the night at my house which was the house where it all happened. I thought that we could deal with it and reconcile and learn to have a healthy relationship. I had no clue how sick he is. What he said that night threw me into the most horrific state of mind i could have imagined. Inside i was so scared and trembling but outwardly i was calm. We stood on the front doorstep as he was leaving and my next door neighbor came out. I tried to speak with my eyes to beg her to please come over and support me. Put her arm around me and let me know nothing bad would happen. But she could not read my eyes. I bore it until he left. I told him later that i would not speak to him again until he dealt with our past. It was a measure to preserve what sanity i had left. For the past forty plus years he has been telling me how negative i am and how our mother was this and that and defending our father. My sister went the opposite direction. I can't say anything to her about my mother without her acting like i was personally attacking her. My mother left me a legacy of having taught my siblings and they their children how to denigrate me, look down on me and call me a liar which is what she did. I thought when she died i would be free but i guess not. The poison she spread continues on in her children. What a hell! Now my youngest son wants me to take his children to the Indian Festival so they can meet their cousins and learn about some of their heritage. He does not know what he is asking me to do. I don't think i can be around those people anymore without having an emotional meltdown. They won't understand, they never do. If they had a clue they would have seen the signs of abuse decades ago. I don't want to risk being unable to care for the kids because i can't deal with them. My son knows the facts about the abuse but he cannot seem to grasp the effects i feel. He says let it go and get over it but men avoid and women don't. Women cannot let emotions go. I remember every emotion i have ever had as long as i did not block it out. I don't remember what i felt or thought while the abuse was taking place. But if you ask me what i felt on any particular day in any situation i can tell you. I can feel it all over again. It just won't die. I would love to go to the festival to take photos. That is my hobby and i love it. But i don't want to see them. Part of me wants to confront them and part of me is still scared of my mother and father. There is no comfort from them and never has been. I cannot fathom how my mother could have loved me and never touched me or expressed any concern for my emotional well being. As long as i can remember i wanted to be adopted into a family that actually gave a damn. I had picked out my Sunday school teacher. I heard her explain to her son about emotions and how to deal with them. I loved being around her. Now that i had to retire i found that i can once again find pleasure in doing things. i went sailing last weekend. It was the first time and i can't swim but i was not afraid. For the first time ever i trusted two complete strangers with my life. That is huge! I believed them that the boat would not capsize. I felt the weighted keel refusing to give way to the water. It was grand. It was peaceful and i want to go again and again. I pray God will work it out for me. I am glad to be on the antidepressant but it does not work on all my depression. Still i can manage. I need the anxiety medication occasionally but usually when i am anxious it is at home and i read the bible or listen to a cd that helps me stay calm. I am afraid of nearly everything. I am afraid to live, to grow up, to die. I am afraid of being reminded of how the relatives treat me. I forgive daily but i still suffer the effects and i hate it. I want to forget it. Sometimes little things trigger memories i would rather avoid. I just want it to go away. At least the cancer is in remission and i have help with the asthma, diabetes and HIV. So i am not in bad shape but i don't know how much longer i will be here and i feel an urgent need to make something of my life. I have lived with HIV for nearly 25 years and i am resistant to most medications. My viral load is still undetectable but my cd4 count is slipping. I just don't know what the future holds and i want to live before i die and i want to live happily without ever having to give a thought to "them". I hope to take my grandchildren to see the Blue Man Group. I took them to see Kooza when it came to town and we all I found the following on Beliefnet and it describes my childhood depression very well. I spent my adolescence and teenage years obsessing about this question: Am I depressed or just deep? When I was nine, I figured that I was a young Christian mystic because I related much more to the saints who lived centuries ago than to other nine-year-old girls who had crushes on boys. I couldn't understand how my sisters could waste quarters on a stupid video game when there were starving kids in Cambodia. Hello? Give them to UNICEF! Now I look back with tenderness to the hurting girl I was and wished somebody had been able to recognize that I was very depressed. Not that I would have accepted the help. I believed, along with all the other adults in my life, that my melancholy and sensitivity were part of my "special" make-up, that they were gifts to celebrate, not neuroses to treat. And should I take meds that helped me laugh and play and design cool barrettes like the other girls, well, then I would lose my depth. On the PBS website "This Emotional Life"--a multi-platform project centered on a three-part series documentary to be broadcast in early 2010 hosted by Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Daniel Gilbert--psychologist Paula Bloom discusses the topic of being deep versus being depressed. On her blog post "Am I Depressed or Just Deep?," she writes: Sometimes, people confuse being depressed with being philosophical. If I had a dollar (well, maybe $2) for every time I hear "I am not depressed, I am just realistic", "Anyone who isn't depressed isn't paying attention", or "Life has no meaning and I am going to die, how can I be happy?" I could likely support a hardcore latte habit. Depression can have such an effect on your worldview. There are a few basic existential realities we all confront: mortality, aloneness and meaninglessness. Most people are aware of these things. A friend dies suddenly, a coworker commits suicide or some planes fly into tall buildings-these events shake most of us up and remind of us of the basic realities. We deal, we grieve, we hold our kids tighter, remind ourselves that life is short and therefore to be enjoyed, and then we move on. Persistently not being able to put the existential realities aside to live and enjoy life, engage those around us or take care of ourselves just might be a sign of depression.

 We all get sad sometimes, struggle to fall asleep, lose our appetite or have a hard time focusing. Does this mean we are depressed? Not necessarily. So how do you know the difference? The answer, as with most psychological diagnoses comes down to one word: functioning. How are you sleeping and eating? Are you isolating yourself from others? Have you stopped enjoying the things you used to enjoy? Difficulty focusing and concentrating? Irritable? Tired? Lack of motivation? Do you feel hopeless? Feel excessively guilty or worthless? Experiencing some of these things may be a sign of depression. Peter Kramer, clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University, devotes an entire book to this question. He wrote "Against Depression" in response to his frustration of repeatedly being asked the same question: "What if Prozac had been available in van Gogh's time?" In a New York Times essay, "There's Nothing Deep About Depression," which was adapted from "Against Depression," Kramer writes: Depression is not a perspective. It is a disease. Resisting that claim, we may ask: Seeing cruelty, suffering and death -- shouldn't a person be depressed? There are circumstances, like the Holocaust, in which depression might seem justified for every victim or observer. Awareness of the ubiquity of horror is the modern condition, our condition. But then, depression is not universal, even in terrible times. Though prone to mood disorder, the great Italian writer Primo Levi was not depressed in his months at Auschwitz. I have treated a handful of patients who survived horrors arising from war or political repression. They came to depression years after enduring extreme privation. Typically, such a person will say: ''I don't understand it. I went through -- '' and here he will name one of the shameful events of our time. ''I lived through that, and in all those months, I never felt this.'' This refers to the relentless bleakness of depression, the self as hollow shell. To see the worst things a person can see is one experience; to suffer mood disorder is another. It is depression -- and not resistance to it or recovery from it -- that diminishes the self. Beset by great evil, a person can be wise, observant and disillusioned and yet not depressed. Resilience confers its own measure of insight. We should have no trouble admiring what we do admire -- depth, complexity, aesthetic brilliance -- and standing foursquare against depression. Kramer's words are consoling to a depressive who spends 90 percent of her energy a day combating thoughts saying she is depressed because she lacks the stamina to be optimistic. In fact, the first time I read Kramer, I experienced profound relief. However, I still maintain that some of my depth caused by depression is a good thing. Not on the days where I'm in excruciating pain, of course. But should I have been one of those nine-year-olds who got excited about which color ribbon I could use to make my barrettes and wasted her quarters on Pacman ... well, I wouldn't be writing this blog.