Betrayal

Looking over old emails, between me and Henrik, Jack and Arn.  Each claimed to be my friend, and each betrayed me, in their own way.  Even 5 years later, it still hurts.


Ah well, as Ennis Del Mar says to Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain: If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it.

Better to have loved and lost ...

... than never to have loved at all.

Rubbish.

I know.  I've been there.

Depression and sadness

I've seen several commentaries and discussions which treat depression and sadness as the same thing.  They are not.

Sadness is an intensity of feeling.  It's akin to grief and sorrow and loss.  It hurts.  It has colour and depth.

Depression is the absence of feeling.  It's greyness.  Indifference.  Akin to exhaustion and tiredness and weariness.  Nothing seems to matter.  Everything is too much trouble.  Life is flat and dreary.

Of course, sadness and its brothers grief and loss can lead to depression, as they did in my case. Over a period of a year  or so, someone I thought loved me as a friend dropped me; my best friend's wife died; my father-in-law died.  I lost some illusions and I grieve for them still.

As time when by, my grief lessened, but my disillusion deepened.  It came to seem to me that people I had trusted had betrayed me, that those who appeared to love me did not in truth, and those who were truly fond of me were dead.  To add to my depression, I had to take a massive pay cut at work (one still not reversed).

Gradually my depression eased too.  But still it is there, lurking just out of sight, and sometimes, it returns though, thankfully, never as bad as it was at the worst.  However, the cynicism and doubt engendered by the behaviour of my "friends" and of the universe have not left me, and I have to work hard to keep going.  When you are depressed, you do what you have to and what you can.  And everything else slips by the wayside.

So, like Lord Peter Wimsey as he worked through his post-war shell-shock, I play patience.  Endlessly, hour after hour.  And I read and reread old familiar books (Dorothy Sayers among them)  and watch old familiar films on DVD (Miss Marple, Star Wars, Poirot).  Drink helped get me through the evening, but I'm not drinking now. Sometimes I have enough energy to write.  To play my clarinet or sax.  But often I don't.

Well, what I suffer is no more than what millions of others have endured, and here I am after all, surviving.

I make a point of being grateful for something every day.  I make little lists of things to be glad about.  This makeshift philosophy works.  Sometimes.

At any rate, tonight is one of the nights when I just don't want to do anything.  I'm reading Lois Bujold with enjoyment, and when I've reread all her books, I will move on to Mary Stewart.  Or Miss Marple.  Or Star Wars.  And glad it is I am that I have even those distractions.

Onwards and upwards.

Happiness

Last Friday, just before I went into the swimming baths to have my swim I was suddenly, intensely, inexplicably happy.  The years of regret for lost love, the betrayal and indifference of so-called friends:  all seemed irrelevant.  I was filled with joy.

When I came out from the baths, I was much less joyful.  I'd done something to my knee.  No idea what but I could barely walk.  Only, of course, I had to walk.  From the car to the station.  Along an endless platform at Southern Cross station.  From the station to the office.  And then, to crown it all, on Thursday and Friday, I had to go on business to Sydney.  And you know how much walking there is in airports.  Kilometre-long passageways, aerobridges, queues for taxis ....

So this morning, Saturday in Oz, I'm assembling all my threadbare philosophy to be joyful again.  And later on, I'm off to the chemist (pharmacist to Americans) to rent a walking stick.

Je me fous du passé !

Thinking tonight about love and loss; about ppl who changed my life for the worse; about how I no longer trust love or friendship because of a handful of ppl I thought better than they were; about betrayal and despair and loneliness. 

Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal !

Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
C'est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé !

Avec mes souvenirs
J'ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux !

Balayées les amours
Et tous leurs trémolos
Balayés pour toujours
Je repars à zéro

Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal !

Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi

[From http://lyricstranslate.com/en/je-ne-regrette-rien-i-dont-regret-anything.html#RKTj2CClOTUKR5lU.99 ]