Buzzards standing on a dead manatee
This is my post for #memoirmonday #46 What makes you sad hosted by @ericvancewalton
The state of how things are going in the world makes me sad, we had a pandemic and I worry we could have another one, we are having birds washing up on our beaches dead from a different kind of pandemic called bird flu, hurricanes that are getting bigger and wiping out towns and homes, fires that wiped out entire towns, bees are on the decline, prices of everything keep rising, we are seeing more and more homeless and drug use, our rivers are dying and even with all of the regulations on fish, they are no longer as plentiful as they once were.
What will happen if all the birds, bees, and fish die off? Will we only have man made products to eat like the plant based meat they are now making and selling to us? Or will the plants die without there being bees to pollinate them?
People are becoming rude to each other, there is no more holding your tongue, people feel the need to tell others how wrong they are or how they should live their life.
And if all of that was not enough. Then comes depression.
Do you know how easy it is to become depressed if you let everything that makes you sad get to you? I know because I fight it every day. I have lost my Mother, Father, and all 5 of my brothers. I can no longer do the job my heart desires because of health issues.
I try to stay positive but as life goes on I find it hard to keep positive thoughts because these things make me sad, and then there is more.
Having two children on drugs is the biggest thing I fight depression with. I have spent many years blaming myself, could I have prevented this when they were young if I did not need to work so much? Or is it from the pain they feel from losing their father who died in a car accident? I tried all I knew to do to keep them from using but I failed. When she was 16 I taped my wrist to hers and slept on the floor with her on the couch. That was the only way I could get any sleep because I worried about her taking off as soon as I dozed off.
not his tent
My oldest son is living in a regular camping tent in Tennessee, I worry about him and sit and cry praying he has food and can stay warm. He bought a small piece of land and he had enough money for electricity to be put in but he has no running water, he catches rainwater for himself and his dogs to drink. He has to depend on someone to come by and take him to the store because he does not own a car or drive, it is a lot on a mother's heart.
He tells me he will be alright but I wish I could help more than I do, my help always seems to me to be not enough, and now it is winter, and I worry about what will happen to his tent if he gets snow. He tells me he might be getting a shed to live in but that is a month away, I will stay sad until this happens.
I have lived through terrible things that were done to me as a child and I still have sadness over them, but I do not want to write about it.
One of the saddest things to happen to my husband and I was when Florida passed the net ban. We had everything invested in net fishing and were raising 5 kids, we were lost not knowing if we could support our home without nets and stay fishing. We had to sell our nets to the state and I told my grandson to stand on the pile and act mad. It has been 30 years and I am still sad that I could not netfish.
Don't say, "things can not be any worse" because they can and will. As it turned out, the net ban did not matter (it still hurts) but since the river crashed I do not think we could make a living with nets as we used to. The amount of fish is not there.
It is almost like God said, I will show you what I think of you outlawing fishermen, but I know it was not God, it was the State of Fl who killed the river by not allowing freshwater to enter it, they changed it from a brackish water lagoon to a saltwater river by not only shutting the freshwater from it but also digging inlets and letting the ocean water flow in and out. I believe the state did this so they could use the freshwater to treat and sell to all of the new developments that are being built. They can not build a new town without the water to supply it.
The state said the freshwater was polluted and they had to stop it from entering the river, they caused fish kills by holding the freshwater back and when the salinity got right, they released it all at once creating small algae blooms, we saw them doing it and complained, but they would not listen to the fishermen. They got public opinion on their side by causing the fish kills.
We started growing clams and were making more money than we had ever made fishing. But when the state changed the salinity it caused an algae bloom and killed everything in the river, even our clams. We lost it all, even the birds who depend on fish to survive starved to death.
Manatees also died by the hundreds, when the seagrass died they went to eating an algae that we call rolling grass, but they could not pass through their digestive system and caused a blockage, they died because they could not poop. That had to be a painful way to die.
That still saddens me. These two pictures are of one eating the stuff that grows on the haul of my boat because there was nothing else for it to eat, it gave him/her a mustache.
I am sorry if I have now made you sad.
photos are mine
