I've been depressed. As a result I have been not writing. I have spotty work in my Morning Pages notebook. I have spotty work in my therapy notebooks and my daily journal is something of a joke. I'm still depressed but I am attempting to do these things anyway. As an author I follow on Twitter says, 90% of writing is showing up and writing. I feel like everything I write is garbage. As such, I avoid it and I avoid posting it.
I recognize now, after having a realization last night while I was journaling, this is all old patterns coming into play again. When I was younger, I was discouraged from sharing when I was having a hard time with something. I was discouraged from writing about the things that were making life challenging. And gods forbid if I wrote anything that could have been interpreted as signs of mental illness. I was regularly threatened with being locked away in an institution as an attempt to make me comply with the things people wanted to happen. On top of that, when I was depressed, I was subjected to even more verbal abuse and told things like 'you have working arms and legs, now get up and get to work.' and sent off to do chores that included stuff like cutting wood. I did not have it that great as a kid. Some people have described my stories of my childhood as Little House On the Prairie on crack. That may be accurate.
I came to a realization last night as I was writing a letter that is never meant to be sent (my Writer's Notebook has several of them in it addressed to people living and dead). I realized that I can write about my struggle with depression and not be ashamed of it. It isn't attention seeking or being a drama whore. I'm not a hypochondriac as people attempted to gaslight me into thinking. I was so twisted up that I thought appendicitis was bad gas up until the point I needed surgery due to the psychological abuse I endured as I was a child. I really sat with this thought last night and said to myself that I don't need to keep to these skewed rules that were put down when I was a kid.
I'm forty years old. I don't live with those people anymore. I am free to live my life as I choose. It is liberating to realize that I don't have to stick with those stupid, repressive, repulsive rules anymore. I can wear what I want. I can have what ever food I want (within reason, because I do have diabetes now). I can write, paint, create, or listen to whatever I want. Hell, I can take up music again if I want and reteach myself how to sing and write music. (I wrote a small song when I was learning to play piano before I got deep sixed by a 'supporter' who then insisted I had to learn to play the Moonlight Sonata. I was eight and could barely read music. I proceeded to quit piano lessons after they kept pressuring me.)
But I don't have those crazy makers in my life anymore. I'm free.
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