One of the things I learned during my years of counseling is depression acts much like a dense fog covering everything and obscuring my view from all else except the smothering depression.  Since the mask mandate in our area, I am struggling with the worse depression I felt in a long time.  It took a lot of sorting in my mind to find out what emotion am I depressing.  I finally found it, anger.  I am using depression to hold down my anger.  I know anger is a hider emotion.  Other emotions are behind the anger so I peeled it back to see what was there….oh my, I found fear and frustration.  I am not afraid of disease.  After cancer, other stuff is mostly annoying.  I fear the mask.  The mask represents the horrors I lived through as a child.  My abuser used a mask on me to make me less human and easier to abuse.  It silenced me, choked me, and terrified me.  Now, my state and city government are demanding I wear a mask and literally threatening me with death if I don’t.  I am frustrated because back in April when all this mess came full blown and reactionary, I did my homework about masks because I wanted to make masks that would keep people healthy.  What I learned, with viruses of this kind, masks don’t work unless you are fitted correctly, then it still won’t work if you are not trained to properly take them on and off and dispose of them in a healthy way.  No mask fitting or training came with the proclamation to wear masks.  I am so frustrated that people are demanding that I wear a mask so they can live in their delusional world that mask wearing makes a difference.  I hate living a lie.  I am angry that people think it is ok to make me suffer so they feel comfortable living their lies.  My whole childhood was this kind of living.  Fear based living is a terrible way to live especially when it is based in lies.  There is not one single study that shows wearing mask is effective.  However, there is plenty of information by doctors that shows that it doesn’t.  Sadly, selective listening occurs when they only listen to those that say what they want to hear.  I can’t change a whole country of people.  Masks are still mandated.  I still feel like I am suffocating when I put one on, no matter how briefly.  What changed?

Another thing I learned in counseling is radical acceptance.  I am accepting that this is the circumstance I am in right now.  There is only a limited number of things I can do about it.  Those things that I can do, I will choose to do to make my life better.  Froglogic calls it embracing the suck.  Sometimes life sucks, embrace and use it to make your life better.  I bought masks with a dragon fly and a butterfly on it.  I make masks for people that need them to wear to be legal so they can work.  I also recognize that wearing masks is abusive and reminds me of everything I went through every time I put one on.  That doesn’t change.  I am a work in progress and I am learning to live in a world that is trying to normalize abuse.  I am angry with good reason.  No one should live with abuse, but here we are.  I’m going to go play for awhile and look at pretty pictures knowing full well they are a distraction.  I hope each of you find a distraction or a way to rest.