You're Not Good Enough

If you have lived long enough at some point you have heard the phrase in your head, "you're not good enough." Sometimes it is true, sometimes it is just insecurity coming to the surface. Either way, you're not alone in this thought.
A little girl sits on the bleacher waiting to see if her number will be called after a long road to cheer leading tryouts. Each number called reinforces her thought that she isn't good enough. It doesn't matter how hard she practiced, how much weight she lost, or even how long it took to pick out the outfit with the perfect bow. Girl after girl until she knows she wasn't good enough.
Or the boy waiting patiently for just the right girl to go to the dance with him. He finally gets up the nerve to ask her and she politely lets him know that he isn't good enough for her.
The PhD student that makes it through all of the coursework, but cannot finish the dissertation. This confirms, "you're not good enough."
I could list example after example, some I lived through, others I read about.
But what I can't tell you is what it would feel like to have a doctor or an organization with your health in their hands tell you that you are not good enough for the medical care that would save your life. I do not know what it would feel like to sit in a holding pattern for close to a year taking one chemo treatment after another to stay alive while you wait for Washington to approve your bone marrow transplant and then be told, "you're not good enough."
My heart breaks for the soldiers, young and old, who depend on our tax paying health care to heal the wounds of battle and yet remain broken or unhealed because they have been deemed unworthy or unfit.
We begin life with uncertainty, we hear messages that are discouraging, but most will end life with some form of hope. People who were cheering you on, someone holding your hand. We all know that cancer is not what usually appears on a death certificate, it is a "complication" with treatment. The key to this being that treatment was occurring...hope of surviving it, even if all hope statistically was lost a long time ago.
How does this happen? Why on earth, having all experienced defeat, would we ever reinforce the ugly side of desperation to hopelessness?

Productivity vs. Depression

When my dad was still with us he told me that if I ever got depressed to become very productive and it would get better.
Oh, he knew my heart and genetic make-up.
If he were still here I would tell him that the sad veil that covered my face with his passing was taken off ever so gingerly with productivity.
Then I would send him a picture of my first tomato.....