I'm trying to write a blog post while suffering from a blinding depression. Not sure how it will go and have serious doubts that I can write more than a paragraph or two but sitting and staring at the floor was getting old so I had to try something.
I hope you don't suffer from depression and if you do I hope you're able to get help. Reach out to friends and relatives and of course seek help from health care professionals. Remember that you're not alone.
Last week someone tweeted the following: "So, teenage girls are 'young women' and teenage black boys are 'threats'? White men: what was it like to have a full childhood?" I responded: "I'm an abuse survivor so I couldn't tell you." There's a lot going on with the original tweet and my response to it (I suppose in modern parlance one would say that "there's a lot to unpack.") First, I readily acknowledge that my being an abuse survivor is irrelevant to the issue. What the tweeter was talking about was white, male, heterosexual privilege, which I, of course, have benefitted from. Females, people of color and LBGTQ children can also be abuse survivors to go along with the vagaries of growing up "different." But I also have a point in that my "normal" status was negated by the abuse I suffered at the hands of my paranoid schizophrenic mother. My childhood wasn't "full" it was torn asunder and caused me a life full of emotional issues.
It is part of the binary thinking that permeates so much discussion of social issues. There is little allowance for nuance, for exceptions, for explanation, for details. A world in black and white is much easier to navigate. It is also easier to deal with people if they are easily classified and when these classifications lead to commonly held assumptions. There are indeed certain....
Blogging was interrupted by me going up some stairs to retrieve something for my darling wife -- tomorrow's our 33rd wedding anniversary -- in the course of which I took a nasty spill coming down some stairs and injured my right ankle. It's not broken but hurts and is swollen. I haven't done a lot of falling in my life as I've always been nimble on my feet. It's a helpless feeling in mid fall when you don't have control over where and how you're going to land. When I hit the ground I feared a break -- I think it's natural to always fear the worst in such instances.
Anyway I've lost momentum on what I originally set out to write which is no great loss. Curiously the fall seems to have knocked the depression out. This I can't explain. Logically I should be feeling even worse having a physical malady to go along with the blues. Maybe it's the writing that has kicked me out of my funk. It's hard to tell with my moods. They rise and fall capriciously. Now that I mention I chatted for a bit with youngest daughter who lives in Brooklyn. Talking to my baby girl always helps.
Now I'm faced with the question of what I should do next. My ankle hurts, I'm stuck in a chair with my foot elevated (the right one, I also have a left foot giving me a total of two, I have a similar number of arms, however I only boast the one head although on it there are pairs of eyes and ears, thus having all my parts is part of the privilege I was born with). So perhaps it's time to wrap it up. I can share more thoughts on binary thinking, institutionalized racism and other topics at a more opportune time.
Geez, now I can't think of how to end this post. Maybe just by stopping
No comments:
Post a Comment