Don’t read if you are feeling a little depressed, because this won’t help.

I feel slightly sad today.  I don’t know why.  It’s not a horrible weeping my eyes out thing.  More of a tamped down feeling.  Like a slow underlying feeling of despondency, the slight ache in the throat, like if I had a good reason, I would cry, but I don’t.

I have no reason to feel this way, which doesn’t help matters. 

I know how lucky I am.  Have been.  My whole life, I’ve been so blessed.

And so, that I feel this way, today, seems ungrateful somehow.  Like I have no right. 

Is this part of menopause?  This feeling?  Or is it a low-grade depression that I’ve been carrying ever since last Fall when all that scary s__t when down with ____.

The thing is, when my blood Dad died, I was sad, but I wasn’t floored with grief, because I didn’t really know him all that well.  My mother and father divorced when I was 3 1/2.  Saw him maybe a total of 6 or 7 times in the subsequent years.  And so when he died, the thing I cried for, wasn’t the father that I had actually met, but the fantasy father that I had held in my heart, all those years growing up.  The father that saw me as special.  The father that loved me.  Supported me.  Was behind me, watching my back, and me watching his.

My father wasn’t able to be that man.  It was unfair to put those expectations on him.  He was a mere mortal, with all the flaws and shortcomings that are present in everybody.  But to me, the betrayal, of that fairy-tale image that I clung onto all those years to keep me going through the dark nights.  Well, it was impossible to forgive him.

I wish I had.

When, Harry, my dad, died, I consoled myself.  “He was only my blood father,“ I told myself.  “Now, if ____ were to pass.  The grief would be unbearable.“ 

Well, in a way he has.  But in a worse way than an actual death.  That would be easy.  But this decision that he made was a conscious choice.  And I think it was the right one and the healthiest one for all involved, but it is hard none-the-less.  And how does one grieve that?  How does one put it aside?  How does one come to terms with the fact that a friendship that she thought was unbreakable is broken?

Because it is broken.  Too much has been said, done.  There is no going back.  No wanting to.  But the grief is still there.  I am grieving two things.  The abandonment and loss of my real father and my pretend one all mushed up together. 

I guess that’s why I’m feeling sad. 

Or maybe it’s all the uncertainty in the world.  The wild volatility of the markets.  Three of the five major investment banks imploding, the other two propped up by toothpicks.  The short term interest rate on T-Bills falling to their lowest rate in over 60 years.  That an article I read yesterday suggested that over 2,000 regional banks will fail in the US.  The whole election situation in the States.  The bad news that is on the Internet, the TV, the news, every single day.  Global warming.  Depleting water, food, oil.  And I’ve been reading all this stuff for years.  Felt it coming.  Not to this extent, mind you.  But I felt it coming and positioned myself accordingly.  So, I’m okay.  Really, haven’t been touched much.  But when I see the diving numbers, and I see families and people loosing jobs and savings and retirement funds.  When I see the foreclosure numbers, they aren’t just numbers in my mind.  I see the parents having sleepless nights, the creditors knocking on the doors, the children, frightened and scared and confused.  And it makes me run to the chocolate box for comfort. 

It’s just too much, what is happening.  What I want to know, among all this greed and corruption on Wall Street and on all levels of Government, is where are the good people?  Where are the hopeful stories?  Where are the heroes that didn’t grab with both fists, while screwing the orphans and widows and children?  Where are these people in these dark times?  That’s what I want, need to know.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

Page 1 of 1 pages