I shall age gracefully because for now at least, I’m forced to.

It’s a very good thing that I don’t have unlimited financial resources because if I did, with my if-one-is-good,-two-is-better mentality, I’d surely give Joan Rivers and Kenny Rodgers a run for their money (I’m sorry Kenny. I loved “Islands In A Stream…”).

I’m going to be 48 in less than a month. Forty Eight? Forty EIGHT?

If I had a dollar for every minute I’ve spent looking in the mirror, pulling my face up, up up and back and eyeballing my butt which is 4 inches lower on my body than it was a year ago…If I had a dollar, I’d go under the proverbial knife.

Every 18 minutes, someone takes his or her own life.

The most recent data from the CDC reports that of those, 4,360 are just kids, ages 10 – 24.

That’s an average of 12 children a day.

I personally spent the better part of my childhood and adolescence under an impossibly oppressive and ruthlessly debilitating depression. I didn’t know it at the time of course. To me, that was my “normal.”  It was my reality nearly every single moment of my young life.

I didn’t know how to articulate it. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I only knew life hurt.

Lucky for me, my father did know how to articulate it and at 16, not a moment too early, I was receiving treatment.