memories.

There was one night I truly believed I would die. We were sleeping in the Bird's Nest, a 150 square foot cabin in the backwoods of Guelph, ON, and I had heard a bump in the night. You pulled me closer and told me that I was being silly. Now thinking back on it I smile but on that night I was up for hours, shivering in fear that our lack of reception and distance from the next human would lead to our demise. It's funny the way memory works. The bad can somehow seem so small and the good can be magnified into a giant. I don't know if it's that our minds want to hide from the pain or if distance from a situation gives us better sight on the important bits. 

I've been going through my possessions. Editing my life down to the things which are important and those that I can live without. Being without half of your belongs for 9 months makes you realize how little Things mean. My memory box has been looming, waiting for me to be able to take off the lid and peer into a life that I used to have. At the bottom of the box of happy memories and significant moments from the last two decades, I found a journal from what I would consider the happiest years of my life. 

When I flipped open the first page I was surprised by an entry that said "two sad people staring at a screen pretending this is living". As I continued to turn the pages I realized how distance I felt from this person writing on this page. How distant my memories and emotions feel from this person who seems so ungrateful. For hundreds of pages, the story continued on the same. The story of my world colored through my lens of depression and sabotaging anxiety. As I looked at the dates on each page, I could find a love letter or celebratory letter from a friend or a race bib that matched that day. This process of matching reality with my perception left me with the heartbreaking feeling that depression had stole my life. Not just the large thing that is happening now but each moment of every day for decades of life.

I talk about my mental illness and depression a lot. Not to glamorize it or use it as an excuse for bad and awkward behavior but because it truly is probably one of the largest parts of who I am and I am still trying to understand how it impacts me. Yesterday's realization that the past 6 months are the first 6 months of my adult life that I haven't been significantly impacted by depression was difficult to face. The reality is in days and weeks that I thought I was happy, I wasn't able to even receive and understand the beauty of my own life. It's probably why I now say I don't care about being happy and cringe when people use the word. Happy is such a flimsy, surface emotion. I care about finding joy and purpose. I care about finding calling and direction. I care about garnering growth in myself and others. 

The question always comes "what has changed in the last 6 months?" "Are you on medication?" I found shame in the idea of medication for a long time and it is what stopped me many times from trying to get help for a problem that I have identified to others for 18 years now. I no longer find shame in them but it is not the solution that I chose. When (not if, it's a when, depression does not just disappear) I relapse into darkness, they will be the first tool I reach for. So what has changed this all for me? I could say that it's my community who allows me to be a mess. It's my running that keeps my endorphins in check. I could say it's the diagnosis of PCOS and the many methods I have tried to get my pain, hormones, and body under control (mostly to very frustrating results). I could say that it was hitting rock bottom and realizing that my depression finally ruined the most important thing I have ever been given, my sweet family. Possibly it's a straight up miracle.  I think they all play a part but the reality is that if I had to pick a tangible reason, it has been my own perspective change.

For 18 years I leaned into my depression rather than trying to find solution or get help. As a teenager growing up in the church (and I can only speak from my singular experience) there was a belief that if you truly have faith, Depression could not possibly effect you. It was not viewed as a medical condition. In my own home I was told that "I had nothing to be depressed about" and so, I didn't know how to receive help. My first husband didn't believe in anti-depressants, eventually making his girlfriend after me go off of hers, so at 21 when I felt like I had reached the peak of my self-harm, him often coming home to scenes of bloodied wrists, I was denied help I asked for. I appreciate my friend, Ericka, who always says that she doesn't understand depression. She's never had it a day in her life but is always so empathetic of my pain when I talk to her. What I see in her is someone who understands that depression is not just sadness, someone who doesn't make it less than it is. She may be the first person who ever gave me the space to be broken in a deeper way by not pretending to understand. 

The reason I talk about Depression so much now is because I am trying to understand it. I'm trying to talk it out with people who have possibly never experienced it. It's a glimpse into a brain that has been given the gift of a period of mental and emotional clarity and can now see how many moments of beauty I have missed because I was too proud or I was told Depression isn't a real thing. I won't sit by and let life be anything but a beautiful adventure anymore. I refuse to waste moments of my life not being grateful and blown away by every perfect gift and grace that I have been given from above. This is a journey. This is the bigger journey that is coming from the current chapter of my life. Even in the pain, I want to be grateful for this new life that is growing in my mind, body and soul. It is perhaps really life for the first time.