Fighting Depression: Holding onto Sanity

  

 

When I wake each morning, I learn the latest damage done to my birth country.

Today's was the stupidity of charging $100,000 for Indian visas when the U.S. could use their talent. This will hurt American business because they lose the technical skills Indians provide. India supplies a good percentage of doctors, one who save my father's life.

This week has been about Jimmy Kimmel and the censuring that gets tighter and tighter combined with Trump saying the late night show host had low ratings when they were the highest of the late night shows. Just one more lie in the thousands. I did read that Disney who was part of the process to kick Kimmel off the air has lost over a billion in shares. 

The beatification of Charlie Kirk with medals, his coffin flying in Air Force 2, statues planned, his birthday a day of remembrance, etc. is sickening. Even right wing Americans have held tributes in Paris. 

A tribute to a white supremacist, hate monger and proponent of women's limitations are things that would make me ashamed to be a citizen of any country that prioritized them. Anger and depression surge through me that I feel I have to say it doesn't mean he should be shot. Killing proponents is not acceptable in a civilized society, but how civilized is America today?

I find I need to really concentrate to see the good around me. 

• Happy seven-year-old boys flying toy planes in the Place de Republique
• A little girl, maybe age three, dressed in stripes strutting next to her father
• I sit under the Mulberry Tree sipping tea at l'Hostalet
• I spend time with special friends I don't see that often
• Cuddling my dog Sherlock
• The grapes on our grape vine are ripe
• Rain on the skylight
• Smiles from my doppleganger father, who is with his mother and sister. We chat.

 

I need to concentrate on my creative self, my novella Sugar and Spice which I'm writing, the new book of drawings of the wooden carousel, maybe a haiku and art work in my foxy notebook. I'm neither an artist nor a poet, but it helps alleviate the heaviness of watching the destruction of my birth country. At least if bad news comes thru my laptop, my writing words are there, too.

There's other things like slipping into a pre-warmed bed on a cool night, getting lost in a novel where I feel the characters are real. The same feeling of characters being morphed into real people to a point that I can decide to spend time with Amber, Jasmine, Crosby etc. whom I watch Netflix.

Once all these little happy-making things flowed like a river. They've slowed to a creek. Instead of just looking at the fast-moving water and being moved by its strength and beauty, I need to take off my shoes and dip my toes in, admiring the stones. 

I tell myself, "I will be happy at all I have." I am not living where the military is occupying my city. I'm not having a forced migration before the bombs come. I live where there is free speech and am a citizen where I can vote on all sorts of things including when something parliament approves and the people dislike.

But hovering in corners of my mind is how the U.S. is self destructing and I can't stop it. I think of my daughter and my husband's grandchildren stuck there and I worry what their lives will be like in a fascist dictatorship with a faltering economy.

I take a deep breath and try and push those thoughts from my mind. I will not give into depression. I will not give into depression. I will not give in...