If I know something about this thing of past lives, it is about depression. Had it not been for it, perhaps I would have never remembered, and now I wouldn’t be here writing this in the blog. Since I remember, depression has lost strength. I can’t say it has completely disappeared, but this is mainly because this world and the human beings that inhabit it get me down with their actions, day after day. Not in vain I sometimes feel like an astronaut in orbit, a silent and impotent witness of the disgraces occurring on Earth, as in this song by The Electric Light Orchestra:
is beautiful and blue
and floating softly through a rainbow
But when you touch down
things look different here
at the mission of the sacred heart
Or maybe not?
In a Facebook page someone was complaining because they didn’t want to see bloody pictures of pigs suffering because of the existence of slaughterhouses that are there to satisfy the demand of meat from human beings. She said that, as she was a vegetarian, she didn’t need to keep on seeing those pictures. I thought: and what do we do then? Turn our backs to reality? Close our eyes? Ignore what is happening a few meters away from us? The same way karma doesn’t exist, being vegan or vegetarian won’t bring you the instant reward of not having to see suffering animals again. That you, in part, are not the direct cause of that suffering anymore, doesn’t exempt you from the responsibility of creating the best world to live in. And it is not enough choosing the path you think is right and leaving the rest to their fate. If you really want to change the world, you will need something else.
I am speaking of animals because I am especially sensitive towards them. Unfortunately, what I have just written is also applicable to human beings.
I understand that person’s grief. I understand the rage this type of pictures cause. We already have enough in our daily life as to get more depressed having to see those images every day. However, I think it is necessary for us to keep on watching them, so that we move our ass and do something to try and change it. That is life in the end.
Maybe it is the time of the year. I spent a summer quite quiet and fun, but October usually is a dark month. I suspect Katrina didn’t survive more than a few months after Johann’s death, possibly befallen in August 1942. When I recall this period in Katrina’s life, from August to November 1942, more or less, I only perceive darkness. And when I connect with Katrina’s soul, it is pure desolation. Emptiness. Loneliness. Complete absence of a will to live. There are no purposes. There is no motivotion. There is nothing. Not even a bit of fear is left.
And somehow you feel the damage in your mind. I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels as if it were something physical, something as physical as a stomach ulcer or a tumor in the liver. Something is not working right. And if you let it grow, it kills you.
I have always thought that anorexia nervosa hides a mental issue much graver, much deeper, something that goes much further than the usual explanations we find in these cases. I don’t want to simplify the matter, much less can I generalize, but I wonder how many of these cases have an origin in past lives and we will never know, because it doesn’t get explored enough. Yes, the trigger may be in the present life, in an excessive perfectionism or the pressure of society that gives so much importance to the physical appearance, or the demands of some progenitors that look for perfect children, but, is it only that or is there something else? Doesn’t it work this way too in the traumas stemming from past lives? In general there is a triggering factor... but the seriousness of the situation is usually disproportionate in relation to that trigger. Someone that is able to stop eating, knowing that can drive them to death, possibly wants to die. And if you want to die, no doubt you are suffering a deep depression.
My monster is not completely gone. Searching deep in Katrina’s heart (and also Susan’s), I still find fear, a lot of fear. Isn’t fear the one that originates anxiety too? There is also a lot of pain, the same pain I feel when I see one of those pictures of mistreated pig or cows. I think I still keep blocked much of what I saw in World War II. I barely recall injured people, and however, I see water tinged with blood running like a river down the street... or I see my own blood-stained hands as I wash them up in a basin.
And, above all, I feel the hole in my heart.
But, what am I going to do? Run away from the memories? Run away from reality? Ignore that the world where we live in hasn’t changed a lot, despite the fact World War II ended? It ended for me, but wars still exist, and senseless dead too.
Depression is very close to madness… or what some call madness, that instant when you are not you anymore and have lost all reasoning capacity. As so rightly says a song by Arena, depression is like living in a shattered room, a room of cracked walls. Depression traps you and tries to smother you. You are surrounded, marked, by your old wounds. Sometimes those wounds are really, really old, so much that most people don’t even have memory of them. But it is all in your mind. And you have the power to change your mind.
Living with these ancient wounds
Here in this Darkest House –
Trapped inside those shattered rooms