Once Upon A Time?

There must have been a time, a place, some circumstance, when I was confident and felt like I had value to myself and the world at large.

There must have been.

I see my children, how they go so boldly about their lives as if they are the center of it all, and I know I must have been the same way, mustn't I?

No one's born into this life thinking they are without worth, are they?

So what happened?  Why can't I remember a single time or place when I felt like I was doing it right?  Why am I always so very aware of how I'm fucking things up, but if I am doing something good it's like I'm not there and can't remember it ten minutes later, like it never happened?  How is it that the positive, if it exists, is so quickly and easily drowned out by the horrid?

Why is it so easy to believe the ugly things people say, to believe the ugly things are deserved, even in the face of love and compassion?

My love and compassion feel battered, bruised, and trampled right now.  They feel...useless...pointless...unwanted...much as I feel I am.

Depression is a hard row to hoe.  It's no easier when one is volubly judged as a fuck up.  It is no easier when people think one should just get over it, or that it isn't real like cancer or the flu.  It isn't easy when it grinds and grinds and drags and darkens, sucks one into the mire.  It is certainly not any better when the best one can do is met with scorn, derision, indifference or apathy.

Days and days I wonder why I fucking bother.

Days and days I wonder why I don't matter.

Days and days I struggle with the idea that everything and everyone would be so much better off if I wasn't here to fuck it all up.

I can't remember a time when the idea of love, the words "I love you", didn't mean "I want something from you" or "Whatever I say or do you have to accept" or "I own you and you have to be who I want you to be"...when they haven't meant the speaker believes to their core that I have some obligation to them.  If that was all I knew of love, maybe I'd be fine, but I see others NOT living in that reality so I know there's another way and I'm just not allowed to join those reindeer games.

Yes, I am in a very bad place right now, and my head is full of shades and ugliness...but how is that any different, I wonder, than when I am NOT in a bad place?

I wonder if I will ever be able to touch a memory of feeling right, or create one in some distant future.  I wonder if I will ever be free of this doubt, the self-defeating, self-hating internal dialog that tells me to shut the fuck up and go away because really, how could I possibly think anyone is interested in my nonsense?

I don't think I ever had whatever it is that lets people go through their lives with grace, confidence, compassion, and love.  Deficient, me.