Recently in From a Fallen Mind Category

I am melancholy today. I am normally a perfectionist. You wouldn't be able to tell if you came to my house. (If I was really a perfectionist, my house would look MUCH better than it does, right?) Well, that's just not how it works. I take on everything that comes my way, and when I can't do it all I become paralyzed and accomplish not much of anything. All that to say that this post is my first that is off the fly.

I found out the day after my last post that the character in the story is pregnant. I spent a good portion of the morning crying. My helplessness overwhelms me. And little chats sound so trite and trivial. Rumor has it that she got married on Wednesday. Fourteen and married. Is that even legal?!? She won't return my phone calls.

This link was sent to me after my last post. Thanks, Kelly. When One Is Enough Also, a story by Jeremy Huggins is definitely worth looking into.

My guilt at life and shame over my faillures feels as though it is crushing me. I can't help everyone. I know that. I know so much, my head is filled with answers that just don't compute for me. How does one make answers compute? How does one live in the midst of all this? I just don't know. But I refuse to continue in complacency and materialism, while little girls are getting pregnant, and babies that are obviously alive (even to the aborters) are killed for damn convenience. I do not know how I should live, but I for sure don't want to get sucked into a comfortable bubble with goose-down-padding, so I can ignore the world.

It has taken three days, but today I realized that I am depressed. I have a steady sadness and ache somewhere inside. It radiates mostly through my chest. It wasn’t until I looked at all the dirty dishes on my counter that I realized it. The glasses with leftover coke and melted ice looked hard and pointless. I wanted to reach out, pick them up, and let them slip, falling to the ground to shatter. Maybe then something would make sense.

Back when I was new at accepting that I have depression it would take me much longer to realize that it had crept in. It was like passing out. A darkness that started at the corners and slowly, slowly, closes in until all was black. Everything would remain blind and seemingly hopeless and joyless. Much slower than the dark the light would ease back in, also starting from the outer edges.

I catch it early now; like nausea and a watery mouth foretelling vomit. I pull my husband aside and tell him. I know he is not a mind reader, and cannot always tell if I am objectively emotional or battling illness. So, I tell him and he treats me with care and gentleness. I also tell him when it is not depression and accept his challenging, advising, and pushing me through my various emotions.

But not now. Pushing me during depression could shatter my fragile outer composure, dragging me from my internal focus at war with dysfunctional chemicals in my head.

It is good to accept what my thorn is. It is good to fight and identify patterns, to talk about it and mature within my illness. Still, at times it makes marriage, children, friendships, and life so hard. If my illness was physical at this stage we would be preparing to head to the hospital for support, tests, an Iv, drugs. But life keeps going on needing me. I just need to identify what these things look like when the misunderstood and misjudged illness is in ones brain.

Only a foolish diabetic would stop taking his insulin. Doing so, as with many other illnesses, can lead to death. So, I fight my disease, and know that it does not define who I am. Someday, I will be a restored oak. Strong, beautiful, with a spirit of gladness.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. Isaiah 61:1-3

Shaun,
At best I am horrible at communicating about myself
Especially when it is ‘unknown’.
So, it can be assumed that the more painful it is the worse the communication will be.
It would be okay to say ‘Okay she is a horrible communicator therefore I better sit tight for awhile and muster up some patience.’
This is not about us.
This is not about you.
This is something that I have fought for a long time.
Something that is coming to a head.
Something that is scaring me.
Something that is a deep thorn in my heart.
Something that is unbelievably painful.
It makes me doubt my faithfulness.
My trust.
My life.
My Christianity.
I have been taught that a person can not feel the things I feel and still be a Christian.
At least not a good God-fearing Christian.
Something that I have no answers for.
No alternatives.
No encouragement.
No relief from.
You are a good husband.
You are a good father.
You have done all that you can.
This is not about you.
Sit and read the lines.
The evidence.
Then tell me that I’m a mess.
That this is my issue.
And I will agree.
Then tell me that I am shitty at communicating.
And I will agree.
I scream for help.
I am a shitty communicator.
But this issue is more important right now
Than my communication issue
This is not about my friendships
I work hard at my friendships
This is about my life.
Learning how to live my life.
How to have life.

Shaun's response:
I was always one of those self empowered idealist who thought depression was for the weak minded, assuming that it was something acquired by some traumatic experience or an emotional default for feeling “the blues.” It would seem natural then that I thought anti-depressants were a way of escaping the past or avoiding real life, which is filled with disappointments and moments of genuine sadness. My experience with depression had been defined by a two hour kids in the hall movie called “Brain Candy.” In the movie everyone gets on the new happy pill called “glee-ming X” to wash, not their depression, but their depressing moments from life altogether. Similarly, I seemed to confuse depressing moments with a very real clinical depression. Two months of marriage quickly disillusioned all of these assumptions of something I knew absolutely nothing about. I was suddenly aware that my wife was battling something she couldn’t see, couldn’t control, and couldn’t understand objectively when it was her own mind she was fighting. It was a full year before I understood that her condition was not about something she did or didn’t do, or something the right answers could fix. I was always beating myself up for not having the right answers or not doing the right thing, and then I would lash out at her when she didn’t respond to my efforts. Finally, when she wrote me this letter I understood that it wasn’t about me! In fact it was hurtful and even insulting that I always made it about me. It was then that I realized she wasn’t fighting some metaphysical issue, but a biological one. It occurred to both of us that depression was like any other disability that ravages the human body. We finally understood that the fall touches everything, including our minds. Depression is a product of the fall, not a product of Sember’s fallen nature. In other words it wasn’t a result of her fallen actions but a result of a curse which touches all of us in different ways. Repentance wasn’t the solution, but treating it so that she could be faithful where God had put her was. I finally understood that anti-depressants were a God-send which enabled Sember to be faithful day to day. If it takes a lifetime of anti-depressants to give her that chance, then praise God!