Self Worth – I Am A Star?

Depression: What is it really? Well, here are just a few comments by anonymous individuals who give their descriptions of how it really FEELS to them. I picked these out especially as they apply to me.

• It's like trying to walk through waist high cement.
  
• It is frustrating and overwhelming. I feel incapacitated by simple chores like laundry and dishes that is not done for weeks on end. Like I am some sort of invalid.
  
• Depression is the feeling of hopelessness, feeling useless and worthless.
  
• I feel nothing good… only emptiness, pain and guilt. It seems as though I am merely existing not living. I question everything I say and do…like, I am not sure how I should be. I am constantly letting those I care about down…does that mean I don't care for them. Depression makes me feel so self-involved and yet I don't even want to think about myself. I don't like who I am.
  
• Depression feels like a circle of guilt, worthlessness, inability, weakness, and fear. All wrapped up in silence and fog. You don't function like you used to, you can't think like you used to, you can't participate like you used to and you let down those depending on you like they used to. You live in a circle of fear and guilt and your brain constantly reminds you that you no longer measure up and there is no point in trying anymore. An endless circle of failure.
  

 

Depression feels like all of these to me, the last comment in particular.

However, every morning of every day I still force myself out of the bed, and routinely do what I can, whether it is to wash a few dishes or do one load of laundry, I will accomplish at least that much!

But housework is quite another story..…..Ha! Dusting? Not even! Sweeping the floor? Nope, not even gonna try, mainly because the thing sounds like it is going to explode every time I turn it on! Cleaning the bathrooms are just more than I even want to think about! Yuck!

We have not been able to update a bloody thing in this house since we moved into it, and that was back in 2002! That could depress even the most cheerful of souls!

 

On Monday of this past week I had an appointment with my lawyer, and I was late. Simply because of a miscalculation on my part of the time for the appointment. The week before had been pure HELL, but that doesn't matter, because I had been informed of this appointment weeks before!

Last week, I had developed an infection in one of my eyeteeth. The infection was deep into the root of the tooth that was already broken off at my gum line. It was so bad that I knew I was running a fever. I could feel it under my skin, burning. Everything else that was going on around me became insubstantial to that damn tooth pain! For four days, at the very least, I was down for the count, I couldn't think, couldn't function, couldn't do anything!

Also on Monday of this past week, I went to consult with an oral surgeon, one that was recommended to me as being reasonably priced. When the consult was done the receptionist gave me an estimate of the cost of extracting seven of my teeth. The total came to $1247.oo dollars. This doesn't include any cosmetic work that would have to come next. Well, considering what had to be done, I felt it was reasonable. However, when I asked about making payments, she told me that since I did not have any dental insurance the bill had to be paid-in-full.

 

Sighs, like we have that kind of money just laying around!

There is nothing for it but to wait until…………………until my ship comes in? Until HELL freezes over? Until we win the lottery?? Until I get another infection most likely!!!

In The Minority

Well, one thing that I am sure about these days. I am a genuine member of a minority. I am a minority in just about every sense of the word. 


When my husband and I were separated, I was in a minority of women known as 'displaced homemakers'. Unfortunately, I did not know that my minority had a name to it. Had I known that, I might have gotten a little more help from some of the public and government offices in my hometown. Not that it would have helped me, because I have a feeling that I would not have qualified for it!!


 I remember that time like it was just yesterday, or even last week. It was a scary time for me, and it was truly HELL ON EARTH. I came very close to living on the streets, literally! I dragged myself to every local public assistance office available, and there was always something that would disqualify me. Most the time, it was because I was NOT a young woman with a passel of children hanging onto me. 

You see, had I been young, and carrying around five or six kids to feed and clothe, there would have been no question of assistance, but since I was an old lady of 58 at the time, I didn't qualify for assistance, either financially or legally. I had no income. Neither could the hubby cough up a couple extra hundred bucks a week to help me out. I had close family but they could not help me financially.


Do NOT get the wrong impression of me here, I am not a lazy woman! I never have been. I might have been naïve, a door mat, and a little dense now and then, but never lazy. But during the time that I was separated I was emotionally bereft. The emotional plane I was on was causing me to be physically impaired also. Depression is as bad as any other serious physical ailment. Its like the aches and pains of the flu quadrupled.


However, during all that time, even though there were things that I sometimes had to do without, there was one thing that I could always count on. The one thing that would make my days on earth just a little better, but only a little. 

On the days when I was able to drag myself out of bed, I had my "Dove", My Dove "Nutrium" bar soap. It was something that I could depend on to at least make me feel a little better.


Last month, I was getting low on my bar soap, so I made a trip to the local Wal-Mart to get some more of My Dove "Nutrium" bar soap. I could not find it on the store shelves. I thought, at the time, that they were simply out of stock, so I went to the local drug store thinking to find it there. I was wrong of course. I went to five different stores looking for my Dove "Nutrium" bar soap. Picture below:

This product, (one that I have been using for years!) ……as I came to find out, had been discontinued by the manufacturer!!!!!! 

Sighhhhhhh……..as I was saying, I am in a minority in every sense of the word. Even with health and beauty aids!! It doesn't matter to the manufacturer that I LOVED my Nutrium bar soap! The only thing that mattered to them is that it was a product of theirs that didn't sell as much as some of their other bar soaps did, so they took it off the store shelves! Did they ask me? NO! Because I am a member of the minority who LOVED IT!


I am sure that there are other women out there just as unhappy about this turn of events as I. I did call the manufacturers to let them know how unhappy I was about their decision. Just to be fair to them, I will say that they went so far as to send me a coupon in the mail. The coupon was for the Dove Nutrium Body Wash. It's not the same! Honestly, after using this particular item for so many years, well………it was almost like losing a very dear and close friend.