Has anyone seen my get-up-and-go?

[Dawn of Hope]

Thanks, guys. I really appreciate all of you. I particularly appreciate prayers. I will bite the bullet and email him about the insurance, and about a couple of other business matters I think he should know about (like the pool) while I'm at it.

I was reading yesterday that the use of antidepressants doubled in the decade from 1996 to 2005 (I think those were the years). Instead of 10% of the populace being on ADs, it grew to 20%, across the board for all groups except African-Americans. (Does anyone else think this hyphenated identity thing is silly? What do you call a person of the ethnic group that used to be called black, if the person isn't American? I know, you call him "Mr. Jones.") I digress.

So the point is that one in five people is on ADs. Lots of reasons...increased acceptance of depression as an illness rather than a character fault, increase in options for treatment, increase in use of drugs in general. The article talked about how psychotherapy was shown to be just as effective as ADs, but insurance coverage is much better for drugs, and also people want to make things easy on themselves, and it is certainly easier to pop a pill with breakfast than it is to actually work to understand yourself and change your thinking and behavior. Heaven knows that if I had access to a pill that would make me happy with no undesirable side effects or other negative issues, I would be popping it five times a day!

Why does everything have to be so blasted HARD??! And can I say that without sounding whiny? If it weren't for my beliefs about right and wrong and God, I definitely would have given up on life a long time ago. And, for the same reason, I sure as heck would have given up on my H...but I haven't. Even though I try not to talk negatively about H, other than here on occasion, and definitely don't knowingly say anything about him that isn't 100% true, I think the only people in my life who aren't wondering why in the world I haven't told him to take a permanent hike, are (some of) those with a really strong faith...and some of those here. So many friends (and all of H's family) have withdrawn all contact with me that I sometimes wonder what H is telling them about me...or what kind of screwed-up value system they have that makes it okay for him to do what he has been doing to me. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about this, but it does pass through occasionally.

Sigh. I wish I knew how to break out of this closed loop. But for now, I suppose I'd better go try to do something productive.

Peace,
Dawn