What would happen if a penguin appeared in your duck pond

[Cr4ckp0t]

I rarely venture out the house but every other day I go feed the swans and ducks in the pond at the bottom of the hill.

 

Yesterday when I returned I continued writing my suicide letters that I began on Friday.

 

I have tried for so long to get the point across to my parents, to support workers, to psychiatrists that there's just nothing to go on for and I'm sick of being patient and trying to "learn" how to manage in a world that I just don't fit into.

 

The simplest way I can describe it is like this:

 

If a penguin appeared at a duck pond what would happen? The swans and ducks and other birds would laugh at them, give them odd looks because they looked and acted differently. The penguin would quickly pick up on this and either be very hurt and get depressed or would try hard to do what the others around them were doing. However hard the penguin tried they would never be able to quack like a duck or elegantly float like a swan, they would always feel very different.

 

The penguin would struggle to deal with the wet, moderate climate not to mention the lack of food they are used to eating. However hard they tried to get used to bread and weeds they would become ill. They would realise they would never find a mate either. Soon the penguin would die from sadness, loneliness, depression and mal nutrition.

 

If the penguin is a fighter it finds it way to a lake, a river or someone's back garden in hopes of surviving but in spite of its efforts it will always be a penguin. The only way it survives is to be taken out of the pond/lake/river and put in a zoo. A zoo is a psychiatric ward. In the zoo the penguin may still not meet any other penguins but it is nurtured and removed from swans and ducks which tell them it doesn't fit in. Sometimes the zoo keepers (psychiatrists) even try understand and make the penguin feel better about itself but then eventually they have to let it go and send it back to a world of ducks and swans.

 

I am a penguin in a world of ducks and swans and no-one quite grasps this.

[darkshine]

Sometimes another penguin might come along, and make the depressed penguin see that there's more in the world than the duck pond, they could show how nice the black and white feathers can look, how agile they can be, they can slide on ice and glide through the water, how there is freedom out there in experiencing the world without a load of dull ducks taunting and without elegant swans making the penguin look clumsy - get the penguin into a different environment and it can show the swans a whole new level of elegance and gracefulness.

 

 

If the penguin is a fighter it finds it way to a lake, a river or someone's back garden in hopes of surviving but in spite of its efforts it will always be a penguin. The only way it survives is to be taken out of the pond/lake/river and put in a zoo. A zoo is a psychiatric ward. In the zoo the penguin may still not meet any other penguins but it is nurtured and removed from swans and ducks which tell them it doesn't fit in. Sometimes the zoo keepers (psychiatrists) even try understand and make the penguin feel better about itself but then eventually they have to let it go and send it back to a world of ducks and swans.

 

Maybe the penguin needs to find the value in being a penguin, maybe it needs it's own type of environment and freedom, not behind bars in a zoo.

 

I hope I can follow my own advice, cuz I don't even feel like a penguin in a duck pond - they are still birds - I feel like a mammal in a duck pond and I don't even know how to swim or fly - but that doesn't mean that I should give up - it just means I have to look harder for the places in the world that I do belong - those places are often with my own company, and I do want other people's company at times, they seem to have fun - but I guess it's a case of finding the special people who accept me and not wasting time worrying about the rest that don't. And it's about really enjoying the times when special people do enter our lives so that the memory is strong and stays with us, and so we can believe that we might find other people, and have those special moments and experiences to take with us in life.

 

I actually really struggle with finding my place in this world, I really do, but in surviving 16 years of depression I feel that there's something about still being here that makes me stronger as time goes on, and as the years have passed and I get older, I start to see what I've got through and I know I can get through it again, and things do get better, and quite often, if you look really closely at the ducks and swans - they aint perfect either - they just make it look like they are - but they aint that different really, they're just playing a different game with different rules, they still have their own world of problems to deal with, and a lot of them problems aren't so different - find the penguins if that is what you seek, but to be honest - you have to start to accept and like yourself as a penguin too.

 

Best

 

Darkshine

[caci]

Everyone is different.

 

[LancsLad]

I agree with Darkshine sometimes we need to find things which make us look at ourselves in a different way. Very often that means dropping what the world thinks about us and working on what we think about ourselves.

 

I have been suicidal at times and have even ended up in a secure unit on watch. I thought there was no point in carrying on I had had enough. One day my partner came to see me and I stopped feeling sorry for myself and looked in her face and realised she was scared. I asked her what was the problem she told me she was pregnant. We lost that pregnancy but fortunatly now have a son who is seven.

 

In many ways I am the same penguin as I always was but someone now looks up to that odd creature who might look a bit misplaced in the world and calls it dad and life doesn't seem quite as bad as it once was.

 

Things change and can take a turn for the better but we have to hang around to see that happen. We get impatient and can help things along a bit by working hard at how we see ourselves. Darkshine makes some very good points that penguins are amazing ###### creatures if you choose to look at them that way. The ones in the zoo demonstrate you can deal with the climate if you want to. I think the answer is to not try and be 'needy' expecting the keeper to turn up twice a day and throw you everything you need. The answer is to go out and find some nourishment yourself it might not be sprats but something else if you can survive on it, so what you never know you might even develop a taste for something altogether more interesting.

 

Sure you have needs we all do the trick is working out how to fulfill them. In such circumstances being different I find is not a bad thing because most people are quite alike and are all chasing the same things that leaves quite a lot of stuff for me if I am prepared to look for it.

 

Just a thought.

[robert7111a]

This made me smile. Thanks for posting. This reminds me of something I wrote in my memoirs some time back.

 

In the duck pond in my local park, there used to be a Chinese goose. It was the only one on the lake. It had a strange bump on the front of its head and I had never seen anything like it. It was a bit vicious at times and the other geese, ducks, swans avoided it. The Chinese goose was indeed a loner and just could not make any friends. Then one day it died.

 

A few weeks later, another Chinese goose took its place (just a little late for the first one). This one was more docile but because it looked different from the other birds, it couldn't make any friends either. But one day, I saw it swimming on the lake with some ducklings in tow. The mother duck was close by keeping a watchful eye but the ducklings were following this Chinese goose. I tried to think what was going through the mind of this Chinese goose. Had it really made friends with the mother duck and her children? Could he long to become a "stepfather"?

 

I used to think perhaps I was like the Chinese goose. As I looked "different" from the masses, they couldn't accept me and therefore I couldn't make friends. For many, many years, I struggled to find my niche in society.

 

I suppose it is like we all have the same colours of the rainbow but these are arranged differently. We all have the same genetic code but the letters are arranged differently. But although we all have neuronal wiring, the connections are different. Perhaps I was a "Friday afternoon job"...

[Cr4ckp0t]

Thank you for your replies - for taking the time to listen and respond - with grat though and insight too.

 

I appreciate it. I know you are both right and I know fate is in my own hands and I have the choice and ability to alter my perception of both myself and the world.

 

I'm tired, really tired of it all. I feel like I have nothing left to fight with anymore. I've fought for so long and I just don't feel I can anymore and more than ever before in my life I really want to die .....

[LancsLad]

I think those feelings are understandable and I can relate to them. You hit the nail on the head when you say you are realy tired. I think in these times we have to look after ourselves and that means eating well, keeping clean and presentable making sure out body functions well and that includes exercise. Bit by bit we can get more energy back into our lives and this is what is needed to refuel a more positive approach. Focusing on external things is often counterproductive because we can always find something which matches our existing levels.

 

Hang in there and push on it is not easy but what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I apply that to myself, each time in my life when I have been very suicidal I have responded and fought back and each time I have become stronger as an individual. I recognise these sorts of feelings are in my make up and will throw me challenges from time to time but I know I am up to that challenge I have faced it before and will do so again, I find that level of belief to be very empowering at a personal level. Some people might not understand that but us penguins we are a bit different and that includes how we think and face challenges an Antarctic winter would kill mosr species off, we are a bit tougher than that!

[Suze]

Please Cr4ckp0t , can I urge you to refer to and read the Depression and mental health crisis support link at the top of the forum pages.Unfortunately I am bound by forum rules and policy to close this thread .