Why...or the rest of the story

Why …

Last week I decided to go on a Facebook fast. It was very hard not to be there to give little encouraging and hopefully supportive comments on the posts of many cherished friends, most of whom are also going through some trying times. But I recognized that if I did not take a break and decompress I was going to do a total meltdown. It was a very narrow edge I teetered on about last Thursday.

Where to start? Well, first I have had ‘issues’ about political things since I witnessed some dirty local politics that caused or at least added to huge problems for my family many years ago. Then I saw and was enthralled by Robert Kennedy speaking (at the Flagstaff, AZ airport) just weeks before he was killed. For years I avoided politics, voting in every election but nothing more. Then in the 90s I found myself becoming an activist. As long as I was in that with my late husband and some good friends, I could keep it in balance.

The last ten or twelve years I have become more and more disgusted and turned off as things got uglier, dirtier, nastier and a level of frustration and helplessness overtook me. Right now the foul and vicious ads on TV here in New Mexico make me want to puke and the national scene reflects the same hate-filled, divisive and blatantly destructive view. When  political ‘stuff’ began to pop up in some FB groups I had joined due to deep interests in their normal subjects, I felt betrayed; I still do to some extent but I think I can cope now.

Sexual abuse/harassment/discrimination: That is a trigger issue too. I rarely say anything about it but I have had my share of problems there. A date rape in college—not a party and no booze or drugs, just my bad decision to go out with a guy I did not really know. It was pretty ugly; I did not report it. Then in 25 years of working for the military (starting in 1970 when we were barely getting into race issues, much less gender ones) I got my share of 'passes', off color remarks etc. and hit a glass ceiling hard enough to leave bumps on my dense Irish Taurus skull.  I retired early in a reduction period, a bit bitter and very disillusioned.

Last, I’ve been wrestling for nearly two months with a complex and very stressful family and inheritance issue involving some property that had come to my late husband through his dad. We both forgot would not be under the community property laws since he acquired his share in it before our marriage, leaving it in limbo. It’s going through a mini-probate now but there are still some enormous things to be taken care of once I am declared the legal owner. That has been eating my lunch lately as I just keep finding more problems and costly ones at that.

So that’s the background. I am not sure what finally had me ready to apply head seriously to a brick wall—just the whole effed up mess, I suppose. Depression is a family trait, sad to say. My father was bi-polar (among other mental issues) as I am to some degree and all three of us kids have had life-long depression issues both from this genetic background and the difficult and sometimes abusive childhood and youth we endured.

The last few years as I struggled with a lot of vision problems and some other matters such as a lady my brother went with for two years who was very sneakily hateful and vicious to me although he did not see this for quite awhile, the loss of my former home in Arizona which I felt should have been avoidable but could not prevent during the real estate crash etc. the dirty old “D” really dug its claws into me.  Just normal life crap kind of stuff but there are times one just does not have the resilience to roll with it.  And suddenly I could not handle anything more.

Rather than block or unfriend people I like and respect  who had dived head first into activism on the current political cesspool—many issues about which I have very mixed feelings and opinions—I just stepped way back for a time. I’m about ready to  return but my wall be be a “NO Polytix Zone” and I will just check ‘no notifications’ on anything that threatens to be a trigger issue.  I'll focus on what I love and care about, what gives me pleasure and peace. I will take a page or cue from two loved and greatly respected friends, both named Julie, who never post anything except cheerful, inspiring and beautiful things that uplift me and I am sure other readers too. We all take pictures and share them--I cannot come close to the artistic work of one but that is okay! 

I'm resolved not to let this deluge of garbage force me to go on drugs (legal and prescribed or otherwise) or fall into a bottle! Life is too short and too precious to go blind to the sunrises, the sweet eager faces of my dogs when we are gearing up to go for a walk, the still exciting pursuit of knowledge about many things that have fascinated me most of my seventy-five years and so on.  I’ll pray for strength and courage and for my guardian angel and the Divine I rely on to be with me and help me go on. I trust they will as they always have, sometimes in unseen or unexpected ways, but I have lived to tell tales of things that could easily have turned off my light. Until it is my time to get off this train, I'll go on as cheerfully and positively as I can. Maybe I still have something important to do. Who knows.