Today I've ben swinging between feeling horrible and feeling on top of the world. No wonder people complain about women having mood swings. They're pretty out of whack with the rest of the world.

I feel restless, like I can't sit still.

I called the county today to get more help with child support...and they seemed to be positive, but they didn't want to give unfounded hope. So I kind of told myself to think they can help, but in the back of my mind, I keep thinking that it will all fall through, just like it always does. Do I dare hope?

My horoscope said an artistic endeavor would lead to good things. I'm not usually artistic, but I did work with some photographs tonight...just some framing that is intended for a birthday gift. But I did get a new DVD project to work on. I will have a busy weekend. My hobby is putting people's photographs into a DVD format, then putting it to music. It's the only hobby I've really been able to do lately. At least it will keep my mind off things for a couple days.

I do feel better today, and I hope it doesn't swing back to like yesterday. That was very, very bad.

Tonight I am tired and sad. I cried. I cannot seem to really wake up and get going. There's no energy.

I don't know what I am going to do. Every day things get worse, and every small bit of hope I had is disappearing.

Things have to get better. I don't know how. I think I am the one who has to change things and make things better. But I'm just too tired.

I am depressed. I know this with absolute certainty.

Tonight I keep seeing commercials on tv that talk about depression and who and how it hurts...then they try to sell you a prescription med. There are two different meds that have almost the same commercial. But, in the end, all it means is that there are depressed people and some little pill is supposed to help you...and one of them says that when your regular depression pill doesn't resolve the symptoms, well, they have another one for you to take, too.

My mother instilled in me a disdain for mediation that I can't seem to shake. As a schizophrenic, she has long been on meds. She was hospitatlized for a mental breakdown back in 1962...and she's been on meds ever since. Her depression was a result of several people dying in her life...and being a mom that had too many responsibilities. To this day, she says if the medical world would have let her grieve and get through the agony without meds, she would not depend on them to this day. While in the hospital, she was treated with an experimental drug that gives her horrible flashbacks and has heard voices in her head, and she has hallucinations. So they treat her with other meds...and she tells us to be very careful of meds.

So, now, I cannot seem to take meds for any length of time. I just can't seem to make them a priority. And now I'm depressed...and I don't want to talk to the doctor about it.

Can you imagine going to the doctor to tell him I'm depressed...and then he asks me why I think this, and I just don't know that I could tell him everything. But, because I am worried about what he things, does that mean I'm not really depressed? If I'm too worried about what others think, does that mean I can't be so depressed that I need professional help?

Sometimes I just want to curl up and cry...but I can't. There's no reason left to show any emotion if no one hears...and if they were close enough to hear, I wouldn't want to be emotional in front of them. Again, does the desire not to reveal emtions mean that I'm not really depressed?

I don't know. I just know that I have a horrible headache, and all I want to do is curl up and not feel anything. To either cry or not cry...to simply not do anything or feel anything would be good. Except that I want to feel good, yet it just doesn't happen.

I'm going to go to bed, and in the morning, I'll probably feel better. I hope so.

If I can hope, maybe I'm not depreseed.

I wonder: When young children are abused, is their anger so suppressed so as to cause the child to self-teach a manner of withholding the expression of emotions? At least for some children, is it such a strong influence that they don't know how to appropriately express--or even admit to themselves--anger at even everyday things. Is it possible that molested children develop such a social anxiety that they cannot express their own wants and needs in a way that allows success?

I know that I cannot express anger. I am always afraid that if I express anger, then I will lose control of my words and say something that I will regret--something that my opponent will one day use against me. I hate for people to have any kind of ammunition to use in a potential battle, for them to hold it in their control until they spring it on me with no warning. And so I don't argue with people.

I remember once that I had begun a new job in a local business. I was sitting at my desk when a competitor/peer of my boss came in and began to say something about my family--something that was very negative and very insulting. He did not know that I was a part of the family he was discussing. But my new boss did, and he kept glancing over at me, almost expecting me to blow up at this man. But I didn't. I just sat there and didn't say a word. After the man left, my boss asked me why I didn't say anything...and I didn't know what to tell him except that I didn't want to cause trouble for my employer. I always regretted not saying anything, but there is nothing I can do now.

As a child in school, I used to get teased horribly. In ways that no one should ever have to endure. Walking home from school, I had rocks thrown at me. I was called a whore, and at the same breath, be told how ugly I was. I was called stuck up and then insulted because my family was poor. I remember working during the summer at a summer youth project with other teens, and every chance one teen boy got, he would unzip his pants and ask me how much I liked his "slim jim." He knew I was terribly embarrassed...thought I was a virgin. I just turned and walked away. Every time. I remember being a large girl and being told to 'Put your weight into it" every time I tried to bat a ball in gym--or was always the last one to be picked for a baseball team, and then every ball was hit out to my right field where I could not catch a ball to save my soul--and then laughed at. I had my hair pulled constantly as an elementary student, then as I grew older, I would get jostled in the high school hallway wo that my breasts could "accidentally" get pulled. And those aren't even the worst parts. But through all the anger, I never fought back. And I still don't.

I learned well to "turn the other cheek." Now I hear the phrase "you've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything" and it reverberates through me.

Children need to stand for something, to tell people what they think. And when they don't, we need to ask them what they think. What they feel. And we have to feel for them.

I am ashamed of myself. I hear about another woman who was the victim of incest, and I just about laugh out loud. It enters my head that these women have no idea what incest is all about, how much little girls suffer, how much they hurt...how much I hurt! It enters my head that they may have kissed their brother and they are ashamed, and I shake my head at these tame imaginings. And I SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

Every woman that has suffered deserves respect and recognition of their emotions. IT'S NOT A COMPETITION. But somehow I tell myself that they cannot possibly have endured the level of pain and abuse that I had felt...and they don't understand. It somehow enters my head that these women are just trying to get attention, trying to make people feel sorry for them--and, all the time, they are just trying to get recognition of their experience, trying to understand the entire thing.

I don't talk about my experience much. I write here, but I don't say much. And that may be a good thing since I don't tend to sympathize with these women. I just listen to them and, without letting them see, tell myself that they are silly little girls that really don't get the complete picture....and I think that somehow I really want the world to recognize my pain--but I won't let the world hear my cries.

Maybe it's because I don't know where to lead them, where to direct them. I've never found a good explanation, a good answer for all the hurt. If I can't find that answer, I can't tell them about the glory that comes with the realization that somehow we can deal with the incest and not feel badly about it. And, if I am discussing such an important issue with another woman, I want to feel as if I know what I"m talking about...and I don't know what I'm talking about when the search for answers is sought. But I do know how I feel, and I can show these women that it hurt, and that there was real pain, and that I want my peers to know that I really do feel pain.

I don't show much pain too often. And maybe I should. I know I should show other people that they are important, that they and their pain matter. But sometimes I feel I have nothing to offer them, and that maybe they are looking to me for an answer that I simply don't have. And i want that answer badly!

I have nothing to be ashamed of...except that I am ashamed I don't feel more empathy for others. Maybe I feel too much empathy, and I don't know how to demonstrate it....I don't know. All I know is no woman should feel like this...and we need to make the world a better place together.