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May 16, 2005
Breast feeding
How do you Justify a tragedy, you come face to face with it, feeling lucky that it is not your tragedy, it is someone elses, and though you are sympathetic with her, or him, you feel still a certain happiness when you get to leave. No you do not have to stay, you have your own life to live. So you go home, kiss your wife, hold your son a bit longer, lay down next to your sleeping daughter, and look at her, happy she is there, happy to get to keep them safe, you run down the stairs, make sure the doors are locked, and everyone is safe.
And then you have the luxuary of forgetting, getting bugged down by your own very life, and its own peculiar problems, you are set free, you are okay, but once in a while it still tugs at your heart, Well
she was only sixteen when they married her off, you had met her, you had seen her girlish smile, laughter, the way she shyed away, looking down while standing next to her husband. They go away, the new couple, looking for their lives, and then a year later they are back, they have problems, she looks sad, disillusioned, her skin not as fresh, she looks tired, with a baby in her hand, her addoring look while she looks at him, breast feeding him, a baby boy. a beautiful, beautiful boy.
And then they go back again, out of your life, following theirs to different places different situations, Her husbands divorces her after a few years, but they just had another baby, a baby girl, you despise her husband, you despise her life, but she is capable, confident, she does not accept any help, does it on her own, raising her kids, she never marries again, you hear about her now and then, her son has grown now, he is in college, you are happy all her hard work, hard living is paying up, a grown son, a teenage daughter.
And then you hear the boy, the beautiful, beautiful boy was killed by another boy,............. and you don't know what to say, how could this happen to her, why her, after everything she went trough, and now this, not her please, no. But reality hits, you go to the services, you see him laid to rest while she is ghost like, colorless
weeping, crying, screaming, looking so old, so helpless, nothing left of the girl you had met so long ago. Just a mother so clearly violated by life.
Time goes on, and then you hear she is counting the days, she is hoping, waiting to die, there is no cure for this, no help, every one gets to go back to their lives but she has to stay and accept. You hear she goes to the cemetery every day, to see her son, and then you write a piece for her, for her pain, and you are never convinced if you can depict her, all of her, and all of her pain with your words, so you get her to lay on the stone, and you allow her in your imagination you enable her to streatch her arms and go trough the stone, and the soil, and find him and hold him again, while the whole experience make her feel she is breast feeding him, as her shirts get wet from the pain manifesting in milk in her breast finding a way out.
Posted by Idinraha at May 16, 2005 12:43 PM
Comments
Very sweet story.
I also wanted to share with you the following, Peter D. Kramer (Clinical Professor of Psychaitry at Brown University), the author of the book "Listening to Prozac" has just written a book called "Against Depression."
On Fresh Air (yes Terri Gross - liberal media ;)), he discussed the details of his book. It is interesting that he talked about how we romanticize depression as a form of creativity. In doing so we can fail to provide adequate treatment to people.
The research he discussed was facinating: he talked about how the brain becomes disorganized, how the hippocampus reduces in size, how there is damage to the pre-frontal cortex and how the body/brain looses it's ability to effectively deal with stress and crisis situations as a result of these biological changes.
Depression is a disease as it can debilatate the person...He also talked about the medication componet. Hope you get this information and I'm going to try to pick up the book so far I am quite impressed with it.
O, he also mentioned the prozac is not necessarily the best medication for depression which is pretty facinating since it virtually cornered the market sometime ago. He also talked about the development taking place on medications that will help to reduce stress (serious and chronic stress) but that's for the future...
"ShrinkLady"
Posted by: ShrinkLady at May 17, 2005 12:28 PM
You are such a good soul, kind, and mostly my kind. I appriciate your comments, your sharing of information and I try to get the book, now tell me any cure, for middle age men with weight problems and active imagination, in any form, thanks SL you rock.
Posted by: Idinraha at May 17, 2005 12:56 PM
Sweet story was actually meant for the one about your son - I posted in the wrong place - I have been known to do that!
O, you are welcome for the information; I enjoy sharing it as you are one I know would most appreciate it. I have posted elsewhere on other sites.
Weight gain is very common from taking some medications including SSRIs - but you can deal with it from eating properly and exercising (see about getting on a protein diet). And there is nothing wrong with having an active imagination. But having an active lifestyle makes all that you imagine all that more exciting because you know that it might actually happen...
Posted by: ShrinkLady at May 17, 2005 01:11 PM