Maggie's Farm

Added to hormonal flux is the fact of losing your parents, having your children turn away from you as they become involved with their own families - and their grandchildren.

Friends you are growing older with, becoming sick and dying... or getting hip replacements, starting to have memory problems...

It is a time of loss. Our time grows short, our youth is irredeemably gone - another cause for alarm. The mirror tells the truth, the physical mirror we see ourselves in, the virtual mirror our friends hold up in their own faces, and especially strangers, men who once looked at you with an appreciative eye, no longer even see you. You have become invisible, even to your husband.

The first time you hear some kid in the grocery store parking lot say like 'Look at that poor old thing, she can hardly walk', as you take your first few steps after getting out of the car. You're fine you tell yourself! It is just the first few steps... but the crass comment from the ill-raised get imbeds itself, festering as it becomes real.

It is a shock but one that comes in bits and pieces - a long-term shock, building slowly until the pain and invisibility overtakes you.

Now tell me there isn't good reason for depression. It isn't all hormones.

(I know you know that, but what sickens me is that it is looked at as a 'disease' that needs to be 'cured'. Time, as with most curable diseases, is the only cure.)