Older

I never minded growing older. I figured yesterday was over,  thankfully. I never wanted to be younger again. The way most people talk about depression, it is something that happens at a point in time, so there is a before that is better.

I don't have a before to return to, a better place, even though before was not as bad as now. It's just that good times were never good, even when I believed they were. Or they have been forever tainted by the truth so it hard to look back fondly over what did not end well.  At my best, I thought I was fraud and everyone could see or would see. The effort of keeping up the facade was exhausting. Like pushing a boulder up a hill, eventually I will tire and slip down and be crushed. I used to believe there was a bottom and that I climbed in and out of this hole, but there is no bottom. Living is pushing the boulder. Death is the abyss, peace possibly. I know numb. I don't know what peace is.

I wrote "Blue-Green Reflection" as an insight into inside me.

I think I imagine living rather than live. "Growing Older" is about growing older which seems to be something I wanted in the past. I don't look forward much at all anymore. Maybe brief moments. In glimpses.

TV

I watch a lot of TV. In there I find moments that speak my story, my soul, my pitiful existence. There is something horrible about living through moments other people make up. I suppose it began when I started reading fairytales. Dreaming of princes and knights in shining amour and happily ever after. It was all a lie. I used to believe I would turn into my parents when I grew up. I thought I would like their music. I thought you grew into people. I have never known who I was. Still, I do not know who I am. I have no friends.

The poem I wrote "Framed" says this in a prettier way.

How can anyone have a relationship with someone who is not anything at all.

I played "Cousin It" by combing my hair in front of my face in my high school senior play, in 1973. People were disappointed. They thought I was hiding. But I was really shouting "I was never here" and I was saying, "See me for who I am, as I do." (You see, I was nice to everyone. People liked me. No one saw who I was. Those who knew I was in pain, avoided knowing it too well.)

Tonight I am recording "Music and Lyrics" I watched it before and in there is a truth I saw but couldn't bear to see. I have forgotten. I hesitate to remember.

I do not exist, I subsist.

avoidance

I can't face it straight on. I can only avoid. Maybe in between the lines, the truth can squeeze though. Maybe in the shadows.

To understand the turmoil is to understand the pull of perfection. It was a long time ago when I wrote "Perfection."

I hate hope. Still, I think I believed in hope then, even though in my soul I knew hope as noose and I wrote about it that way in "Taut." I wanted to want hope, to have hope be real and lasting. I wanted a way out. I suppose I still do and always will until I die, finally swallowed within this bottomless abyss. I can only hope it will be over then. How ironic.

about depression

I thought I could write about depression. It sticks in my throat. I hate listening to drug commercials for meds because they lie. No cares unless they are in it for the money. Everyone shuns the depressed. I think of how much pain there is in me and how many millions there are like me and I think it is too much to bear. This is an ugly world and I want out.

silence

I have been silent for a long time. Keep trying not to listen to what I think, even if I never say it, it haunts me. I don't know who I am anymore. I rarely go out. I rarely talk to anyone. No one calls. Walking to the kitchen is work. I just wish I would disappear.

The silence is deafening as in "Rewind."

My children both briefly visited me this summer. That changed things. Not how they act or keep in touch with me, that has not changed. I am sure I matter to them. They both love me. As I am, I am not wanted in their lives.