“How can you be broken?” I berate myself. “Nothing bad ever happens to you.”

 

It’s true. I live a mostly-charmed life, especially by global standards. My parents divorced when I was nine but even that worked in my favor when I gained two more tremendous parents, four siblings and additional grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins I would not otherwise have. That also doesn’t begin to cover the long-reaching effects of seeing more marriages from the inside and being able to design what I knew I wanted, and didn’t want, in mine.

There was a Christmas where my gifts came from Goodwill, but we still had a house and food and vehicles with fuel in them. Plus, Christmas in my homes was about so much more than gifts that I can’t say anything really felt different from years before. During this lean time, my parents also explained what budgets are and taught me how finances work so that I’d understand why things were tight and then I was able to use this knowledge later in life to avoid crippling debt. So another win for me.

My parents seemed awfully strict when I was a teenager. There was angst. There were small rebellions. But none of that ever led to trouble or sadness – quite the opposite. I ended up excelling in school, volunteering, working and focusing on my future, all which paid off in hefty scholarships and opportunities many don’t get or waste if they do.

No, my life has been pretty great. Really great. So how come I suffer from depression and anxiety?

The answer is because depression and anxiety aren’t tied to a mindset. They’re not emotions anyone chooses. It is irritating, though sometimes endearing, when people say “but don’t be sad! Look at what you DO have!” However, my depression isn’t because of things that have or haven’t happened to me or what I possess. I’m really good at seeing the positives in the bad. We’re talking… better than average at it thanks to God’s grace.

How do I know? Because when I was five, I was touched inappropriately by an older, mean, neighbor kid. He said disgusting things. He touched me without consent. While that’s not as awful as the experiences of some, it’s still enough to mess a person up. Plus, life isn’t a contest and if this piece of it were, I don’t want to win.

Shame and hurt and confusion aside, I never let it define me; but it was always in the back of my mind. I knew it wasn’t my fault, that I had done nothing wrong, but still felt shame. That was until, by the grace of God, I managed to forgive that boy. He grew up troubled and I knew it. In high school, I realized life’s not fair, we don’t live in a meritocracy, and I saw how much harder life was for some kids than others (like me), and so I forgave him. Completely and truly. I realized that by forgiving him, I wasn’t saying what he did was ok, but rather, that I was ok. And I couldn’t be completely and truly ok until I let it go. Forgiving him brought healing to me – a true sense of relief. I learned how to forgive an egregious wrong before I was an adult. That’s a blessing. See? I even spun something horrible into a positive – and I mean it.

Then in college, I was home for a weekend and found out he had hung himself. I was able to feel sadness for his family (if they cared, I cannot say), and pray that he finally received whatever peace it was that he sought.

After five years at my first job after college, I was fired. It was the first time I had failed in any way that mattered, ever. I was 27 years old and just learning for the first time, how to fail. I didn’t do it gracefully. The loss of a job that had made me so unhappy and had become a huge stress in my life was a relief. At first.

But after several months of working on my master’s degree and applying for jobs, I still hadn’t snagged a new one. DIDN’T THESE PEOPLE KNOW HOW CAPABLE I AM?! I researched and perfected the art of cover letter and resume writing and got A LOT of interviews. And then got a lot of rejections. I spiraled into a deep depression, believing that there had to be something wrong with me. My faith began to suffer. I had prayed for relief from that job and now was much worse off, in my opinion.

It got bad. It got to the point I only got out of bed if I knew friends or family were expecting me to be somewhere or coming over. My poor son got really good at independent play and not by choice. I struggled to meet school deadlines despite not having much else to do during the day.

This doesn’t even compare to the pain I’m certain I caused my husband. I was not effective at ANYthing in my life during this time. He picked up all the slack. He tried really hard not to make me feel even worse. And I’m glad he didn’t, because my severe anxiety was already taking care of that. I felt so awful I couldn’t get out of bed, and then, when nothing got done around the house or on my homework, I felt even worse about my condition and that made it harder to get out of bed the next day to break the cycle. And so I spiraled further and further down. And he was still there when it became obvious to both of us that I wasn’t going to get better on my own.

Now that I’m on the other side of that struggle, I realize I didn’t get several of those jobs for good reasons, that I was supposed to get the job I did when it was over and my relationship with God is better than ever. It prepared me for my new life, one where God was at the center, not me.

So I know how to reframe the negatives to see the beauty in life.

The problem is, sometimes that’s not enough. The reframing that I’ve tried to do tens of thousands of times and that has been suggested by loving friends and family, is actually more harmful to me than I realized, until recently.

I know I’m lucky. I know my blessings are abundant. So when I’m at my lowest, and someone tells me to just “think more positively,” to “reframe your thinking,” what I hear is, “You’ve got no right to feel this way. You’re stupid. You’re worthless and you don’t deserve these good things because you can’t appreciate them.”

Do you know what it’s like to hear that from everyone you love when it has already been on repeat in your own mind? It’s pretty bad. It makes you feel worthless and shitty. And that shitty, worthless feeling makes you spiral even further into the pit of your depression.

The pit.

Oh, the pit.

More on that awful place when I think of the words to describe it.

I am broken. But that’s ok. I’m learning to see the beauty in that.

 

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