I'm tired of pretending everything's okay when it's not.
Life is not easy. Frankly, it's f'ing hard and anyone who says differently is in denial. I'm tired of pretending I've got it all together when I don't. The truth is that the older I get, the less I understand and the more broken I feel.
Tonight a friend of mine asked me about my experience with depression... how long I've dealt with it, how have I coped, how have I gotten better? She's seeking for hope, and she needs to know it can get better. Only someone who has dealt with depression understands the despair that comes with it, the battle for sanity that takes place in your mind every moment of every day... the fear that things will never change.
I haven't felt that kind of despair for a little while, but I remember like it was yesterday. During my "dark days" I would go to the bathroom at work multiple times a day to let out the tears and brokenness that plagued my mind and heart. The weight was unbearable, and it was all I could do to make it from one hour to the next. Sometimes when life weighs so heavily on you, it's all you can do to take it minute by minute, second by second, because thinking ahead even to the afternoon or evening is too overwhelming.
I want to be honest about my experiences with depression because I feel like it's still so taboo, especially in the Christian circles. I never told anyone at my church that i grew up in about my depression or that I went on meds because I knew they would judge me and tell me I wasn't walking with God the way I needed to be. Everything was a spiritual problem and it was up to me to fix it. I no longer understood the meaning of joy or hope, and somehow I knew it was more than something I could fix. It wasn't a spiritual problem. It was something that's been passed down through my family, and I just so happen to be the one to deal with it more than the rest. I say all this because I believe so many people out there deal with depression and anxiety and believe it's something wrong with them or a spiritual problem. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But it's something that needs to be brought out in the open and talked about, because once the thoughts are put into words and those words are said outloud, they lose their power.
The last couple of years have held some crazy painful experiences, and I honestly have no idea if I've dealt with them or not. I do know, however, they've left me hardened and braced for the next huge secret to come out, the skeleton in the closet that was buried under years of bad advice, bad decisions, and promises to never tell. My heart feels so hard. I doubt a million times a minute, and I have little faith that these trials serve a purpose. However, another friend of mine believes they do, and it's good to be reminded of that, especially if I have difficulty believing it myself. Sometimes all we need is someone else to believe in us. I don't want to be hardened forever, but honestly, I'm afraid of what God will do to soften my heart again... What will he take away this time? What will he ask me to give up? What new trial will bring me to my knees before him? I honestly don't know if I can take anything else.
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