“We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again
like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home."
Since thirty-four *million* Americans will be told they suffer from depression at some point in their lives, we *all* know or are someone who has dealt with this mood, mind and life altering state. However, that means absolutely nothing to that much, much smaller number of Americans who fight, daily, hourly, heartbeat to heartbeat, with the physical, chemical imbalance of clinical depression. This is not that thing that grips you after Bobbi Sue leaves you at the alter (even though, dude, that did suck). This isn't even that terror, helplessness, immobilization that happened after your third baby when postpartum hit you like a hurricane and you thought that Brooke Shields was the only voice of reason in the world (and you were probably right, grrl). This is every day. This is like demon possession or a contorted stranger who rides around on your back, maybe letting you have one or two or ten "good days" before you haul off and slap your son or tell your wife she's useless and fat. This is the stuff that robs hard-working, brilliant artists from being able to create. This is the hardcore sniper who takes out the most articulate word warrior and leave her speechless when she most needs to fight.
This is depression you can't pray away.
Or... can you?
I am not, by many definitions, a Jesus Freak. And yet that's exactly what I was called today by a very near and dear friend. We were just talking and she said, as an aside, "I know you think you can just pray anything away, little Jesus Freak that you are, grrl..." and then she ate a jelly donut.
I blinked. I cocked my head. I took the last bite of her donut and said, "I don't believe that, actually." But by the time I got home, I decided that I do.
"I know you're out there.
I can feel you now.
I know that you're afraid.
You're afraid of change.
I don't know the future.
I didn't come here to tell you
how this is going to end.
I came here to tell you
how it's going to begin.
I'm going to show you a you
not ruled by this thing.
A you without without
borders or boundaries.
A you who makes anything
and everything possible."
The bigger the problem the harder it is to fix. Um, yeah. That makes logical sense. And yet billions of dollars a year are spent by people trying to do the hard thing (no, it isn't easy... shoving your face full of garbage food is easy) of losing major weight by some easy method. And, stunner of all stunners, it doesn't work. Like my jelly donut friend likes to say: Epic fail.
What's more, we all have different *God-given* abilities. Strengths and weaknesses that are different, unique from one another. What we have seen is easy for one person might be colossally difficult for us. But who are we to question the divinity and reasoning of God? Yeah, I don't think so. Kinda like a ten-step plan with fewer steps, let's just:
1. Accept life is hard.
2. Accept life is struggle.
3. Accept life is worth it.
I've been told before that my attitude (encompassed in these three points) is way too "willing martyr" or even far too "accepting of the unacceptable" for most everyday Americans. I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that many of my fellow Americans were so delusional. I don't feel like either a martyr or at all accepting of the unacceptable. I simply believe, with all my heart, that if life were easy, if the physical, chemical framework of our bodies were simple, we'd all be running around singing "Man in the Mirror" and making that change. But life is actually all about the complexities that make us made in His image and not made in the image of tapeworms.
Another adage kept coming into my mind on the drive home. That hiking saying: Walk lightly. Carry what you need and leave nothing behind.
Of course, that is not a good adage for life. It would actually be a really, really crummy life philosophy. But often, someone who suffers from major or "explosive" depression, feels like they are stomping through life leaving behind them a path of destruction and damaged that cannot be undone. These individuals are damaging themselves as they crash through the thickets and brambles of life, and they are damaging every loved one traveling with them. Because, far more often than not, these individuals are not alone, but rather surrounded by partners, husbands, wives, and children. Everyone is hurt. And no one is left the same.
I think the best approach would be to add a step to our not-quite-ten-step list:
4. Leave the moment better than it was.
Stop and think about that. Now, you might say, with depression, wouldn't it just be enough to leave the moment? Or leave your family? Or shut up, tune out, plead the Fifth? Um, yeah, if you want depression to win. I know that sounded simplistic but what I mean is: For every moment that you just try to stay quiet and get by, not engage, you are thinking of nothing but your depression. Your entire focus is on that. But what if, instead of wallowing, drowning in your own chemical bloodbath of doubt and despair, you made it your personal freaking mission to make every time you walked into a room actually *better* for someone else?
You step into the room and kiss your baby.
You step into a room and hand someone a cookie from the jar.
You step into the room and tell a joke (not a sarcastic or biting one).
You step into a room and hand a love note to someone you love.
You start to leave positive marks on your landscape. You leave behind the best of who you are. Even if depression has stolen your tongue and you can't find the words, you will not be without a voice. A good friend of mine has a sock drawer full of colored papered hearts. Every day she puts one in her coat pocket. When her depression spins out of control and drags her down, she gives the hearts that have gathered in her pocket to the people around her. Because they've stayed. They've stayed even though, sometimes, she's hurting them as badly as the depression hurts her. She just walks into the room and leave behind her hearts. Instead of screaming or fighting or throwing a vase, she leaves behind hearts. Her seventeen year old daughter told me, "I have a treasure chest. It's handmade and sits in the corner of my room. In it I have a shard of glass from my graduation photo that Mom threw across the kitchen once when she was raging. I also have three hundred and seventy-eight paper hearts. That piece of glass always reminds me how ugly she can be when she gets low. But I don't see it very often buried beneath all those paper hearts."
5.Pray constantly.
Ah, the Jesus Freak is in the house. I mean, could just as well say, "Sing constantly" or "Talk constantly." but I thin "Pray constantly." just has a certain freaky perfect to it, don't you? Let;s practice:
"Lord, I'm about to see Joss. He will say something with double-meaning. He will act like he owns me. It isn't my imagination. It isn't depression. Others have substantiated my feelings about him. He will be an ass. Help me smile at him, speak clearly and say only what is needed, not engage, and think of naked mole rats and how his wanker must look just like one."
You think that's too irreverent? Guess your Christ and my Christ aren't the same one. Go ahead and click to another website. Come back when you actually bring someone to God instead of terrify them into submission.
Let's keep praying:
"Lord, I'm feeling scared and low. I'm going into a stressful place filled with stressful people. Give me the strength to just wade into that stress and tell the really funny joke about the priest, the hamster, and the IMVU credit."
"Christ, allow me to swing my daughter into my arms and make her whole evening."
"Christ, it's me again. I just want to cry. Let's listen to music instead and then watch 'Glee' on Hulu."
"God, the chemicals surging through me are like a cancer. They eat away at me. Wearing me down to nothing, to worse than nothing, to a cancer in the lives of the people who love me. Because God? They have proven their love. Because they are still here. It would be the easy thing for them to go. But they stay because I fight to stay, too. Fight with me, God. Help me lift them up even as you lift me."
The moment, the second, the heartbeat you lift someone else, you will be lifted. The moment you reach out, you will be touched. No, not because turnabout is fair play, or because you're keeping tabs, or expect anything in return. But rather because thinking about something other than yourself and your situation and your own spinning wheels to nowhere, will *free* you to sing.
So maybe we should rewrite our steps. Maybe they should just become:
Accept it.
Face it.
Pray about it.
Rejoice in it.
Live it.
What's it? Life.
Or maybe the paper hearts line the path and the approach is only:
Love
"I looked at the sky
and remembered that
you’re always there.
Reminding me that all
I really have to do
is breathe."
For you are already loved in return.
EJ
Alex shares.
Krizia shares.
