Depression is, well: depressing

(I know it's too long and unedited. Walk it off.)

[I'm going to preface this by saying that this purpose of this post is NOT about you worrying about me, or about my needing attention. It's about a conversation we need to be having, and that is worth having, and that is most certainly within the scope of the Church's license to discuss.]



So you know how when little kids fall down and they look around to see if anyone is paying attention? And if anyone is looking on, they start to cry; if no one pays them any heed, they just pick themselves up and continue on with life. Being deathly afraid of children and the semi-permanent to permanent damage my presence, demeanor, and sense of humor, carefully coupled with my inability to read and then deal with emotions (mine or otherwise), I don’t know any of this firsthand. But either normal people told me about it, or I read about it in a photo somewhere.



So my policy on life, injuries (or which I have many), and any incident of idiocy is kind of the reverse: when I get hurt, fall down, run into a table, trip and hit my head on the wall, or get mauled by bears, I want people to see it. I want them to see it and ENJOY it. Because let’s be honest: it’s funny. When people do dumb stuff, other people should get to enjoy it. The Jackass movies and my life are the two longest running institutions with this policy. Once, while skiing, I got a little two much air coming over a hill and failed to land the jump. I ended up impacting the snow, having a ski fly off and smack into my other leg, and leave me face first in the snow in front of a man in my church who had just answered affirmatively to my request to date his daughter. At the end of the day we were swapping stories and, as I told mine, someone asked, “That was you?!” It was so epic they remembered it, even though they’d been riding the lift at the time. In that instant, in that query, it suddenly became completely okay that walking on my now purple, swollen shin was barely bearable. Bottom line: if I get hurt, but someone got to enjoy seeing it happen, it usually makes it worth it.





So I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post for weeks (pronounced “months” if we’re honest). It never seemed to flow smoothly in the barrage of blog ideas. There’s very little about depression that creates opportunities for me to work in two or three obligatory Teen Girl Squad (forever hereafter “TGS”) references. But here goes:





I struggle with DEPRESSION. I have since I was twelve, and in general I’m pretty sure I always will until this earth is renewed or I go to the dirt to wait to wait for whatever The Big Guy Upstairs has cooking. I try to understand my depression, so I classify it whenever I can, which is usually after the fact. A common trigger for me is exhaustion/tiredness. When I was a kid and in a bad mood my grandmother, or “G” as I call her, used to say that I was either tired, hungry, or constipated. Grandmothers say stuff like that. And understanding that being tired doesn’t help, sometimes I just need to sleep it off. But I find different types or manifestations of depression in myself.



-There’s the assessment of no value in my life or person. No matter what I think or do I just can’t shake the simple fact that I don’t like myself. I know I have people who care about me and love me and can list off good things about me (or could if there were a financial incentive in view). And even on these days I know that any other day I too could call up something about myself of which I am fond. But on these days I reach into my brain for some pick-self-up and I get 404-ed (TGS reference #1). For those who don’t know because you’re just too young, “Error 404: file not found” was what used to come up in the browser when a page couldn’t be found, or when you were previously connected to the internets, but someone called the phone line and AOL dropped your connection.



-Rage internalized is another type, it turns out. This is, in my experience, often the more blatantly spiritual side of the coin. It is like I’m being followed around by some creature, like an evil possum (TGS ref #2) that can talk, and he (or she) just keeps telling me that I need to take my own life. This is all there is, and it would be easier on everyone, myself included, if I’d just move on. The first time I experienced this I was in the seventh grade and on the floor of my mom’s bathroom, lying there trying to find a shaving razor in the cabinet to break open and get hold of the blade…. Once, shortly after returning from Iraq, I took the pistol that I own and removed the magazine, placed the mag in my room and the pistol under a roommate’s pillow. I left it there, away from myself, knowing that a .40 caliber hollow point was far more accessible than the blade in a Venus3. Even more recently I had one week where I was severely depressed and read a point in the last two days when suicidal thoughts were all that I could hear. I say “one week” instead of “a week” because it was literally ONE week, to the hour. Circa 10am on a Tuesday to circa 10am the next Tuesday. No discernable cause, no discernable cure. It came, it was dark enough to want to get arrowed (TGS ref #3), and then it was gone.





So if it isn’t pertinent to the content of a particular post I want to write or to a point I want to make, then why write about it? This is pretty dark stuff to post on the interwebs, isn’t it? The answer is that although this doesn’t always directly affect the topic of the day, it colors so much of the conversation for me. It affects how I think about myself, about God, about others, the state of the world, and what it means to “be a blessing to all peoples,” including my own.



But any church or ministry that considers giving me a job will likely read this thing. And any girl I try to date has access to it as well. And let’s not even mention the fact that real people (not theoretical constructs like employers that will hire me or girls that will date me) – people with whom I still have to interact on a daily basis, just might read this.





But it’s like I said: If I get hurt, but someone got to enjoy seeing it happen, it usually makes it worthwhile. Sometimes I fall, and if someone else can benefit or grow from that, then it helps make it worth it.



Statistics say that 1/5 to ¼ of all college students will experience depression, to some degree, in their four (or five? Six?) undergraduate years. That means that 75-80 percent of you have no idea what I’m talking about. But some of you do. Some of you, to greater and lesser degrees, know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve felt it too. You’ve looked inside, or at least thought that was inside, and seen nothing worth preserving and nothing worth continuing on for. Or maybe you’ve just become so overwhelmed that you got so down it was easier to sleep than interact or study or go to work or pick up your kids or answer the baby when it was crying or go to your little brother’s birthday party. I get that. You’re not the only one.





And I STRUGGLE with the THEOLOGICAL questions of it all, too. I really do believe in a good God, a Jesus who gets us and chose to walk among us, and a Spirit who speaks to us and could whisper warm, fuzzy statements into my ears all the time, insulating me from the hardness of some parts of life. Why doesn’t God just take this away from me? And the answer I have to offer: I don’t know.



But here’s what I do know, and I think it is part of my answer. I have seen SO MUCH GOOD come out of my discussion of depression. And not just my talking about it, but my OPENLY discussing it with others. In the last few months, I’ve





-shared my struggles and given others the opportunity and courage to share their struggles too

-started a dialog with a family member who is also depressed and self

-medicates with alcohol more often than either of us would admit

-learned how much I need other

-learned how much others need me

-learned that allowing others to help bear my burdens isn’t nearly as burdensome on them as I’d thought

-seen victory in my life over private suffering and questioning-found the friends that call just when I need, and want to walk this road with me.

-seen God work powerfully in some of life's deepest pits (Genesis 37, where Joseph spends the middle of the chapter)





I’ve seen more blessings, and been more humbled, and moved to more honesty and true community than I will try to communicate here. It’s enough to point towards those things, I hope, and to open the conversation a little wider.





On 27 June I was sitting at Mozart’s in Austin writing about how I was going to start writing about my God, depression, struggles with sexual immorality and sin, and all kinds of other topics. In fact, I was preparing to preach and to talk about those things therein. That morning I wrote, “I might even make a fool of myself, too. But maybe it’ll work, instead of pushing the status quo.” Then a friend, who’s testimony is not dissimilar in some ways to mine, preached a sermon that more or less duplicated my journal entry. And at the end he talked about Manute Bol. This guy was a professional basketball player who took every endorsement opportunity he could get. He made inordinate sums of money in his time, and he spent it all. The guy made a fool of himself in advertising other peoples junk, and worked so hard in the basketball court to be the best, and he finished his life with very little money or worldly possessions to speak of. A story like every other, right? Wrong. The guy went broke building –hospitals- for people in need. Being Sudanese himself, he sent the money he made almost immediately to help Sudanese refugees.



I’m 5’7’’ and have terrible hand-eye coordination, so it’s unlikely to say the least that I’ll ever make millions on the hardwood. And my professional Ultimate (Frisbee) career isn’t taking off the way I’d hoped. But I have some assets: dignity, self-respect, a voice, a vote, a small checking account, and a near encyclopedic knowledge of the early TGS episodes. And if I can expend those things, making a fool of myself, and sharing the work that God is DOING (and not just wait until it is done and in the rear-view) in me and in the world around me, I’d say that’s worth it. No hopes of a job or a date or laying low amongst my peers can overwhelm that.



I don’t fear a whole life spent being depressed. I fear that I’ll forget the hard parts of my life and the grace of God in them, and that I’ll forget to share that with others, and thereby waste it. Here’s to not wasting it. 




(originally posted at afireinmybones.blogspot.com)