Post-delusional Depression

 The past decade has been---eye-opening????

Now, at 69 years, 10 months and 13 days, I am finally getting that the feeling; the dark, empty, hollowed-out, hopeless feeling that has been growing within me since the night Hillary conceded the election, is just a symptom.  My generation, the generation born post-WWII, born en masse of veterans and their honeys jumping into marriage in preparation for their men to go fight and perhaps die to keep us all safe from fascism,  the generation that, put up their flags on flag days, national holidays, days the sun shone, the generation that lived through the fight for civil rights, abortion rights, integration.  That generation.  We were many.  And now we are old.

Getting old is hard work.  But recognizing that so much of what we were raised on was fluff, that in truth, except for the rich and powerful, we were mostly raised on ideals, prayer, patriotism, hard work, freedom, equality, truth, fairness.

If you walk through an old farmhouse, you will frequently see an odd mix of heirloom-aged tools still being used, modern conveniences, and souvenirs---frequently tasteless things, a toothpick holder shaped like mount rushmore, the standard face of anglo-saxon Jesus glowing out from a corner of the diningroom.  In the old family farms, getting pretty rare these days, the house may have arrowhead collections, framed letters from presidents, photo albums and bibles with family "all the way back".  The first generation was always "in America"  like the family before the migration did not matter.

We were house-proud, land-proud, heritage-proud, and so proud of our country we would hunt up those ancestors that fought in the american revolution, the civil war--either side, frequently both, and practically worships our relatives that died fighting for "our freedom".

In school, we learned about columbus--getting here, not really where he landed or what he did once in the western hemisphere, and never much about the people already here.  About the pilgrams and puritans and never much about who those people were, nothing about canada or mexico or the history of south america,  It was always, all about the European immigrants in North America.  

My granddaughter learned about the first americans---the pilgrams---every year for 6 years right before Thanksgiving.  Same story, always the same level of detail---which was pretty much suitable for a 5 year old but way to simple for a 5th grader.  It wasn't history, it was cheerleading. It was the only history in her curriculum in grade school.  (as a reader from a young age, I knew more in grade school, and think we had some history in grade school, not just holiday stories, but I can't be sure)

I liked old family stories all my childhood, they weren't always true---at this point I have fact checked most of them, but public school history was a dry, sodden, pointless mess of memorized dates, famous leaders, names of battles and wars with their dates but not their reasons, what led to them, why we always won--except for the battle of little bighorn---and Custard was a hero but again, no idea why we fought that.  

I loved university history courses, those teachers, while the basic requirement was a bit tedious with names and dates, the rest were full of nuance, reasons, causes/effects, more big picture built from details and the usual mishmash of a timeline of unrelated dates and names and wars.  

And now, we all see the effects of not teaching history as a living thing, not teachings it to everyone---with both sides and causes and effects and connections to the ordinary people that were always left out in our public schools.  

WE DON'T KNOW OUR OWN HISTORY---and are doomed.

I was also doomed, by my own belief in the ideals of our country that were so well pressed into my mind that I never conceived that the country was not being led by the ideals I so passionately loved.  Not getting what the actual difference was between the very wealthy, the very powerful, and the rest of us.  

I was living in a delusion, the delusion of the constitution, bill of rights, morality, ethics, equality.  And this past decade has thrown it in my face so hard---I woke up.  

Post-delusional depression is hard to work with.  And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.