Depression hasn't killed me so far, and at this point, I'm pretty confident it won't. Because at this point, while it's still painful, it's also familiar. I've learned to ride out its occasional visit.
This, too, shall pass.
Except in fall and winter, depression—never a welcome guest—tends to overstay. As daylight dwindles into early nights, that old familiar darkness creeps back and settles in, unpacking its portmanteau of pain I feel but can't touch, can't escape, and can't completely explain, despite the fact that I understand it's woven from the threads of my abusive past.
Face cupped in my hands, eyes closed, I chant my mantras: I can't do this again. Why do I have to do this again? or simply, I can't. Other incantations include, I don't want to be here anymore and I hate this life, which, when I stop to think about it, is probably shorthand for, I hate feeling this way and having to live this way.
Because this way is such a bloody struggle. Every damned day. Nothing, it seems, comes easy—a truism that applies even when I'm not in depression's grip. At 74 years old, life's struggles, large and small (some so small they're ridiculously trivial), have worn me out, and that weariness keeps the door to my psyche cracked, giving my least favorite visitor access.
But this, too, shall pass.
I know this, because, time and again, God has brought me through, so I'm confident God will bring me through again. It's what They do. (They being the 3 Persons). I might wish James Finley was talking through his hat when he said, "God spares us from nothing," even though he continued, "but sustains us in everything," except personal experience—which includes childhood sexual abuse, parental emotional abuse, spousal abuse, and psychiatric abuse—seems to bear him out. I wasn't spared, but I was absolutely sustained, or I wouldn't be here.
Sometimes I wonder if being sustained by God is actually a mercy. I mean, when you know you're going to receive the strength and stubbornness to get through, you understand there's no escape; you just have to endure. Those self-destructive moments when I imagined—even half-heartedly attempted—to leave under my own power didn't, thank God, last long enough to see me gone. God's grace, timely intervention, and pure, preordained stubbornness kept me here.
Today, suicide no longer has so much as a toehold.
Because those thoughts, too, have passed.
I know I can win this round. I detest knowing I'll have to win bouts again and again, but I'm confident I can and will.
Because now I understand, in a way I couldn't before, there are people who need me. Focusing on someone else lifts me out of the abyss for a while ... or at least, gets my attention off it. So even though I haven't done the dishes or cleaned house or mowed my lawn or done a hundred other things I should've, I'm somehow able to (reluctantly) check in with friends and family, participate in my online spiritual group every Tuesday morning, volunteer at Hospice a couple times a month, and maybe volunteer at the local food bank.
Make no mistake: I have to force myself. Every. Time.
But I'm able to exercise every day and get out of the freakin' house once in a while to treat myself to an iced coffee, despite the fact that I never, ever want to do that or anything else.
Do I actually enjoy any of the healthy things I do? Not often, although I do experience satisfaction. It's the doing in spite of myself, the helping others no matter how minimally, the beating depression at its own friggin' game, that are important.
See, after decades of acquaintance, I'm onto depression's tricks. If I stop doing what's good for body and soul (mine and/or others'), even for a day, I'll get sucked into darkness so deep, I won't be able to move at all. Movement requires enormous force, but the power behind that force doesn't come from me. I suspect this is where God's sustaining comes in—feeding me willpower when pain and darkness whisper about the seductive comforts of isolation and complete inactivity.
So far, I've written about what I've learned along the way. Today, I maybe got a hint that there's more. I read Mary Oliver's poem, "The Uses of Sorrow," and I started to wonder, for the first time, if my own box of darkness had given me gifts. If so, what are they, and why haven't I seen them before now? What if recognizing and appreciating my gifts from darkness will lead to its ... and my ... redemption?
Something to meditate on ....
I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten .... and ... you shall praise the name of the LORD your God. (Joel 2:25, 26)
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