Ghost Children-Another take on Depression

I'm always trying to understand what is going on in my inner landscape and how my perceptions of myself get so distorted and dark.  I like the imagery of my depression as being fragmented parts of my childhood identity that desperately need healing.  They have been silently following me through life and reappear whenever I start to feel intense feelings such as fear or grief.  The suffering these ghosts have caused me over the years is almost unbearable, because I didn't understand what they wanted.

The ghost I want to talk about today is worthlessness and existential angst.  I used to call it Hermie, but really it's just sad little Jeanne.  When life gets tough and I feel powerless, it tries to further steal my light,  saying things like, "nothing matters, no one cares about your feelings, life is pointless etc."

I've come to realize this was how I felt alot as a child.  I recognize the sad eight year old alone in the corner of the playground, wishing she could disappear.  I remember trying to play foursquare with the popular  kids and they would purposely kick me out of their stupid game, by playing unfairly and pretty much throwing the ball at my head.  I heard haha, you're out! loser! etc ways to often.

So what did I do?  Did I tell my parents I got ostracized by my peers every day in elementary school? Nope, because at five years old I decided they were to dysfunctional to confide in so I worked extra hard in school so they could at least me proud of me.  Did I tell teachers? Nope, tattletales aren't well liked and they really didn't understand bullying in the 80's and often gave little kids shit for being antisocial.

So I found a way to cope. I wanted to cry, somedays I did, but more often than not I'd get in trouble for crying or the playground staff would force me to rejoin the bullies.  So I buried my little eight year olds sadness and rejection. I told myself that no one cared about Jeanne, that she shouldn't be sad, that there was something wrong with her and that she didn't fit in.  This was alot to swallow.

I didn't want to be forced to play with the little asshole kids, so I'd read alone in the isolated portal, and if anyone bugged me, I told them I was reading.   No one intervened, this went on for months.
 I read more than  90% of  kids in grade 3-6.  I'd get so completely hyper focused on reading I'd lose track of time,  Pretty soon I'd read all the decent Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and science fiction books in the elementary school library.  My mom took me to the public library and I cleaned up there too.  I read the Lord of the Rings book in one long sitting one day at home, I was so intent on escaping my little person world and living somewhere more magical.

The one cool thing about all of this is that I got really engaged in stories about female heroines, that overcome adversity and this gave my little soul hope and strength.  I desperately wanted to be an alien princess, leading her people through social and environmental challenges on foreign planets.
Anything was better than being me.

I guess what saved me was my strong interest in language and creative arts, because as a child you do what you excel at and you don't have to worry about getting a job.  Later in life, realizing what I got A's in at school wouldn't easily lend itself to finding a career was as damaging to my psyche as bullying, because my natural skill set is not easily remunerated in a capitalist society and money is a form of apprieciation.

Sitting alone in the staircase of the portal the furthest away from my tormentors, I became a ghost of the vibrant divine child I was created to be.  The constant re affirmation I was getting from the other kids that I was different and my feelings didn't matter got deeply engrained in my subconscious.  These are some of the roots of my suffering and depression.  I got the wrong message and continued to tell myself the wrong things when life got tough throughout my adult life.  No one championed little Jeanne, and I live with the ghosts she created.

Luckily I am so much more that my suffering, so much more than my pain.    I can learn to be the mother that the ghost children so desperately needed, and love them for their original pain, but stop believing their faulty beliefs that I am not worthy.  No child should have to live with bullying and not be able to get help.  I just hope that other people can realize that we need to heal our past traumas so that they don't keep showing up as automatic negative thoughts.  When we get to the root of our suffering we can align with the universe and find healing if we stay open and vulnerable and turn towards the light.  We all have the ability to heal if we are willing to shed some of our old ideas and turn our will and lives over to our creator.