Prosperity

Wallowing is an easy thing to do. I've battled the dark forces of depression for most of my life, starting when I was about eleven years old and the first experience of abuse touched me. It's familiar. A worn, old quilt patchworked with the failures and sadnesses of my life. A warm comfort of self-loathing, depreciation and doubt that I can pull over my head when things go wrong. I can look at all the different pieces of pain -both past and present- that fit so nicely together and encourage my wallowing sadness to unlimited ends. The blanket of dispair is so easy for me to cuddle up to. Almost too easy.

This may sound strange to some but I have to work to be happy.

It's hard for me to focus; see the joys and eleations that are before me. Most of the time I have to look hard and deep into my life to root out the happinesses that I've been graced with. Even when they're staring me in the face.

I look at my garden and the failure is far too easy to see. Eaten leaves, dying vines, propigating bugs distract me from what does grow. The banana pepper plant has taken off. It's needed no real care other than sunshine and cool water. It's lack of issues has my eyes glazing over it's beauty until its bounty smacks me in the face.

The same can be said for the lemon grass. I bought it on a whim, not really knowing what to do with it. I have never seen a bug on it, it has never wilted. It takes up four times the space it did when I got in a few months ago, yet I pass it by because it lacks issues. The drama of the hard-to-grow and not-so-hearty fill my attentions.

And the one small silver sage plant that errupts with long healthy leaves only gets a momentary pruning when it gets too large for the space I've designated. I have so much that I'm giving it away to a few people that said they'd like some.

That is the kind of prosperity I want for everything but I need to narrow my focus and be grateful for what I do have. I need to throw off the blanket of depression I've hidden under for so long. Fold it up and pack it away. I won't get rid of it fully, sometimes it helps to see what I've gone through, how much I've surpassed those pieces of my past. That the patchwork quilt those sorrows make up are what make up me. Who I am today. And I'll need to add to it the new pains and disappointments the rest of my life hold.

I can't say that I'll never succumb to the warmth of it again but I can try to see things as they are. Try and view the prosperity of my life fully relieved of my self-made shroud.

And prosperous, I most surely am.