Truly the light is sweet, Ecclesiastes 11:7
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Welcome to Searching for Sunshine! |
Having depression has shaped me. It's changed me, and in a lot of ways, for the better. It's one of those weird conundrums. "Everything happens for a reason." This phrase has been running through my head a lot lately, and I've been trying to wrap my head around it. Because, if everything happens for a reason, does that mean God intended for me to have depression? To suffer through the hardest years of any teenagers life with the added weight of mental illness I start to go through this scenarios. 'What if's'. What if I hadn't gotten sick? What if I'd never experienced this? Would I be the same person? Would I be where I am today? If I hadn't gone through this, would the version of myself be a version I could be proud of? What if I hadn't made it through? What if I failed the test? That last one scares me the most. What if I failed The Test? I don't mean some trivial test like in class. I mean the test, the trials God puts us through. What if I had failed to make it through my depression? What if I never made it to here? If I was just another memorial about the seriousness of mental illnesses. A warning to other teens that taking your life didn't fix things? What if I had never gotten to see things work out? I am so glad that I did make it through. That I survived. I'm happy that I made it to where I am. I found something that I am passionate about. I have people whom I love, people worth fighting for.
I'm happy. Two years ago, my only dream was to be happy again one day, I never thought it would happen. But it did. It gets better. It sucks, I know, it's hard, it's horrible, it's painful. But I promise. I promise, once you make it through, you will be stronger, you will know more about yourself than you ever thought possible, and you will be happy again. Just hold on for a little bit longer, because you are loved, and this world is better with you in it. No matter what that little voice in your head might say. As dodie sings: "I promise you, it will all make sense again." ~dodie, Secret for the Mad
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For my non-South African friends: A "monkey's wedding" is a South African term for a "sunshower". Hello wonderful people! I hope you are all doing well and that you have taken the time to go outside and soak up some sun! Today I want to talk about grief, specifically during a breakup, and why we don't need to feel guilty for not feeling sad.
I just recently got out of quite a serious relationship, and I want to talk about some of the things I learned. Now, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, break-ups suck. I thought this person was "the one", we'd been dating for over 2 years in total, I loved him more than I thought I could ever love anyone. Aaannndd, then it ended. It wasn't some brutal, "hate the ex", kind of break up. It came quietly, the clouds rolling in slowly, so that you almost don't notice them. You don't notice the drizzle when it starts, you only realize things have changed once you start to shiver from the cold, and wet of the rain. By then, it's too late for an umbrella, it's time to go inside. Just because it was time, doesn't mean that it didn't hurt. I still cried, I liked being outside, I liked the sunshine, I like the breeze. I liked being in this relationship, I liked being able to say I had a boyfriend, I liked the security I felt for my future. I still mourned the loss of that relationship. But I didn't mourn for nearly as long as I thought I would. I was able to get up and go about my day. And at first, I felt bad for that. I know, weird eh? I felt guilty about not being sad. "This relationship was serious to me, why am I not more sad??" I think there were a couple reasons for this. The first is quite simple: God. When I last went through this I was very far from God. I didn't talk to Him, I didn't pray, I didn't want His help. This time I am much closer with God. I talk to Him all the time, I pray, I ask for help, for understanding, for peace. And God has blessed me with that, with peace and understanding. When I determine how sad I should feel, I base it off of how sad I was when we first broke up. That was 2 years ago, and I was in a pretty bad place as it was. So the pain of a break up felt a million times worse because I was already so overloaded with emotions. Now that I am healthier, I am able to process emotions in a more "normal" way. Now this last one is a bit difficult to explain, but it's also the main reason I am writing this. my ex and I didn't fit. Yeah, we're great friends, we work together well, but we don't fit as a romantic partnership. As much as we might have wanted it to work, it couldn't. And I think deep down I knew that. Our dynamic had changed, we behaved as friends. When we broke up, not much changed. Rather than saying "boyfriend" I said "friend". We still speak, I still volunteer for him at the church, nothing changed. I just removed the word "boy" from our friendship. So when it came down to it, I didn't mourn for as long, because there wasn't as much to mourn. I still kept my friend, I still kept the good parts of our relationship. We just took out the part that didn't work anymore, and we're much better for it. As for the love part, I had it wrong. I loved him, I really did, just not in the way I thought. I loved my boyfriend, I loved what I wanted him to be, but I did not love him for who he was, and it took breaking up for me to realize that. I'm still learning from this experience, learning about myself, about what I want. I'm learning to trust God, that even if I don't know what His plan is, He still has one. I've realized quite a few things over the last few weeks, and I will do my best to articulate this, however it will take more than one blog entry. So for now, I leave you with this: Everybody grieves differently, and you don't have to feel guilty for not being sad. Rainbows and sunshine, that's a cliche, eh? Life isn't always rainbows and sunshine, you won't always be happy, you won't always be able to control your thoughts. They're called intrusive thoughts for a reason. I forgot this, I had had a few really good weeks, and I thought "Hey, I'm getting better, it's going away!" I forgot that mental health isn't a straight line, that I'll have good days and bad days, heck I could have good weeks, or months, and then have bad ones too. And in forgetting this, I forgot the purpose of this blog. I didn't start this just to only write about the good times. I'm searching for sunshine, and so, sometimes there will be clouds, and there will be darkness, and I can't hide from that. And so today, I'm going to tell you about what I've been through since my last post.
These past few weeks have been pretty rough. It's like my mood climbed onto a roller coaster, and it's taken me up, and down, and all around. And honestly, the downs were a lot bigger, a lot longer and a lot worse than the ups. There was a lot of anxiety, anger, sadness, hopelessness, I was depressed. I slept a lot. The main physical symptom of my depression is exhaustion, I'm tired all the time. The amount of effort that is required for me to be able to function on a semi-normal level drains me. This means that I can sleep for 12 hours straight and still wake up tired. I didn't even have the energy to shower regularly, getting up and going to class felt like an impossible task. I didn't want to see people, even though I knew that getting out could greatly benefit my mood. Initially, I didn't want to write about this, I didn't want to be a downer. But I can't hide from it, we can't hide from it. Having a mental illness means that sometimes I'll feel like this. I know that it'll get better eventually, I won't spend all day in bed, I'll have the energy to get up, get dressed, to brush my teeth, to wash my face. Heck, maybe I'll even have enough energy to get through and entire day without crashing, I'll be able to have fun again. My mood did eventually start to clear up. I hit rock bottom, where everything felt dark, I felt like I was suffocating, I slept for 15 hours straight. And then I started to feel a bit better. The next day wasn't great, it wasn't even good, but at least I woke up and did something. It's a long journey back to normal. I'm still quite fragile. Sometimes my mood will drop suddenly and I'll feel like it's back to square one. But maybe it won't last as long, or it won't be as bad. I guess I could describe it like this: Imagine you're walking along, having a good time, and then suddenly you trip on a stone. You've fallen down, it hurts, but you can get back up again, you can keep going. This is what it's like when you're at a normal, healthy place. You have your setbacks, but you can dust yourself off and keep going. Now imagine this, you trip on that stone, but then you fall into a sinkhole. Now you're really far down, and it's dark and scary. That's the bad spell, and you can fall for a long time, or a short time, it's different every time. After you've hit the bottom, you can start to climb back up. It's hard work, and as you're climbing, you lose your grip, you slip, you fall back a bit. Overall, you're progressing, you're getting closer to the top, but sometimes you fall further away, these little slips are easier to recover from, you only fell a few meters. This is the recovery, you're still not great, but at least you're improving. It's a lot easier to fall here than if you're in a healthy space, and it's harder to recover from the fall. These sinkholes can vary in size, I might fall a couple hundred meters this time, maybe it takes a month to recover. I could fall kilometers, that would take a bit longer. But in the end, we climb our way out. My church does this thing where, instead of calling us volunteers, they call us servers. At first I thought this was weird, it sounded weird, why would I want to serve? We usually equate servant-hood with slavery, and I did not want to be a slave, it sounded unpleasant. But then I realized this, to be a servant of the Lord, is not to be a "slave", it as an opportunity, and an amazing one at that. To be a servant is to be blessed with the ability to help further God's mission, to help bring other people to Christ- no matter what your role. Isn't that the ultimate goal? To help other's experience the joy of Christ, the power of His love? Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me. John 12:26 (NIV) Now, my goal here is not to force you to sign up to serve at your church. (Although you totally should, it's so fulfilling.) I am writing this because I want to tell you the story of my experience as a servant of the Lord through my church. I've been helping out with various special events through my church for about 7 years. Our annual "Plunge" event and the youth worship team being the two biggest. However, it wasn't until this year that I began serving on a weekly basis. My boyfriend (Brandon) works with All Nations Church as the Communications Director, and this has allowed me to serve in various areas. I help with small things, making graphics with bible verses for social media, running a quick errand, storing nearly 300 gingerbread house kits in my car overnight, helping set up for youth nights. On Sunday mornings, and at special events, you'll more than likely find me with my camera, playing the role of the church's photographer. I take pictures, I post to the Instagram story during service, nothing big. But it's something that helps expand the church's reach, and therefore allow more people to know God. For one of Brandon's projects, I got to interview people about their serving role in the church. Through this, I have had the amazing opportunity of getting to know people who I otherwise might not have. I also got to hear about their experiences as servants of the Lord, and I got to see, first-hand, the joy that they experience. This was my main takeaway: while putting yourself out there can be nerve-wracking, the sense of fulfillment and love from God outweighs it a hundred times over. Serving has given me purpose, I have a reason to be at church every week, I can't miss a week because "I didn't get enough sleep", or "had a late night". I am forced out of my comfort zone, and through that I have met amazing people. I have developed skills that will further help me serve God. When it comes to my mental illness, I get anxious and depressed if I am not doing something useful. When I worked, it gave me something to do, it kept me busy enough that I literally did not have time to be anxious, because I was either working, or sleeping. Serving is nothing like that, yeah, it is something to do, but it has purpose. I don't feel as anxious or depressed because He fills me up with His joy. And, I GET TO SPREAD THAT JOY! Serving God has helped me be closer to Him. It's a constant reminder that He is the reason for everything, and that I will always be able to turn to Him. And He has brought joy, hope and light back into my life, after years of darkness. Okay, so I know it's been a while since I last wrote, but I have a very good excuse: EXAMS!! I've spent the last couple weeks holed up in my room studying for my exams and trying to get final projects in. It's been a whirlwind, but, I'm finally done! …for the year, and then it all starts over again in January.
Throughout this whole ordeal, I've had some trouble with my mood. Partially due to being eternally exhausted (I slept for 15 hours after my last exam), and partially because of my thoughts. Last exam season I lost all of my friends. Literally. Since grade 12, I had had a really close-knit group of friends. We would have sleepovers all the time, we saw each other every day, they were basically family. Until they weren't. All of a sudden, I noticed that there would be major inconsistencies in their stories. They'd exclude me from conversations, hide things from me, and towards the end, lie directly to my face. I try to be a very forgiving person. We're all human after all. I know that you'll make mistakes, I do too, and I will forgive you for those, I won't hold it against you. But I do not accept lying. To me, lying is not a mistake. With the amount of planning and forethought that is required to keep it secret, it can't be. This all happened around the time of my exams, and it was really hard on me. I mean, I had lost everyone. Or so I thought. What I hadn't yet realized was that, while these friends had been really good to me for about 2 years, they were holding me back. They had encouraged me to settle, I didn't push myself in school, at work, in life in general. I became comfortable with where I was. I had fallen away from God, and I hadn't yet realized. I think God had put those girls in my life for a reason. He knew that I was going to pull away from Him, and that I would need people to support me through that. So He gave me those people, and for the time that I needed them, they were good to me. God knew that I would start to come back to Him eventually, and that when that happened, these girls would hold me back, that I would need new friends, friends that would encourage me to pursue my relationship with God. At the same time that all of this drama was happening with the girls, I started talking to my now-boyfriend, Brandon. He was my rock through this. He supported me when they were hurting me. He invited me back to church, and he introduced me to new friends. People who were also Christian, who understood my struggles, and who would help and encourage me on my spiritual journey. When I was going through a hard time 2 years ago, when I was so lost and hurt that I pulled away from God, He didn’t leave me, or abandon me. He gave me people that He knew would support me, and keep me safe until I was ready to accept Him back into my life. And when I was, He opened the doors so that I could find Brandon, who helped bring me back to church. I thank God everyday for this, for giving me what I needed, even if I didn't know it. I thank Him even though at the time, when I didn't understand, I was angry at Him. And I thank Him now for giving me the friends that I have now. Have you ever walked into a crowded room and felt completely alone? It sucks right? Okay, now imagine that feeling, except the room is full of people that you've known for years. Maybe it's your classmates, your friends, even your family. For me, it was my old youth group.
I had been with the group for about six years before this started to happen. The group had become a family to me. Sure I had my family at home, but if I were to wrap all of my dad's office supplies in cling-wrap, he'd ground me, not laugh. So this youth group, I'd been going for 6 years. I met my best friends there, I found my voice, I learned to love myself, and those around me. (Cringy, I know, deal.) So how did this place, a second home of sorts, suddenly become so foreign to me? If you guessed anxiety, ding-ding-ding, you are the winner! (No prizes, I'm sorry...) I started to experience my anxiety about midway through grade 11. And, as with most diseases, the symptoms started off very inconspicuously. "Am I anxious, or am I just tired?" Grade 11 is when it starts to get hard, and it didn't help that my sleeping habits were not exactly fantastic. So when I had my first bout of anxiety, I thought I was just stressed about a tremor in my hands. I didn't know that the tremor was due to the anxiety, and not the other way around. As the anxiety got worse, and I started to recognize it for what it was, I became more enclosed. Secluded. I was embarrassed. I didn't want people to know. Anxiety is weird, I didn't want to be one of the then "1 in 5" teens who experienced it. No. That was not me. I would not allow it. That was when I started to lose myself, and when my "safe spaces" became nuclear. I didn't trust the people around me, no one knew how to handle me. I was anxious, I was depressed, and I wouldn't listen to everyone's advice to "Just Think Positive!" Towards the end of grade 12, I spent 8 days in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Program. Yes, I got that bad, I went to hospital. When I got out, I was very fragile. At the same time, my close-knit group of friends from youth had imploded, and so I was left feeling very lonely. Regardless, I went back to youth. I walked into a room full of people I'd known for years, and I felt completely out of place. I'd missed the previous two meetings after 6 years of near-perfect attendance, so people were curious. Sure, everyone wanted to make sure that I was okay, I got hugs, and the sad caring look that soon became familiar to me, but I felt completely out of place. Everyone knew, "Ali had been to hospital, she was Depressed." They weren't being mean, but they all knew, everyone knew my big secret that I had tried so hard to hide. I may as well have been standing on stage with no clothes on. Eventually, I got over it, I opened up about my experience. I even went back to the youth group after graduating to tell my story. I learned not to hide from my mental illness, it's not something to be ashamed of. As it turns out, speaking about it can help other people who have similar experiences. Knowing I wasn't alone in my struggles helped me, and it helped me help others. I've always loved when it snows. I love the way the air becomes still, and quiet. How every footstep feels like a whisper. I love how the snowflakes will stick to my scarf and hat and make me feel like I'm glowing. I love how the snow hugs the trees, clinging on to the branches, as if for dear life. I love taking my dog out when it snows. Watching him sniff about at invisible smells, his tail curling up behind him. The way he jumps through the snow as if he's running through water. I love the snow, I love the way it coats the world in this innocent, peaceful, blanket. I will always love the snow. As I was walking home from my classes today- tiptoeing down the trail, under snow covered trees, the snowflakes kissing my cheeks and resting on my scarf- I was excited. I couldn't wait to get home. I would run upstairs, grab my camera, leash up my dog, and set back down the trail. I wanted pictures of the first snowfall, the prettiest of all the snowfalls. When the red from the maple trees is still visible on the ground, with last leaves of fall still clinging to their branches, it truly is beautiful. About halfway home, everything changed. I didn't want to take pictures anymore, I didn't want to walk my dog. The snow wasn't beautiful, it was scary, it was taunting me. Come, come lie with us, sleep, sleep forever, it's too late for you, but maybe you can spare them. Now this isn't going to be a blog about demons and ghouls. Well, mostly. There will be demons, but not the kind that hunt you down in the dark. The kind that live in my mind, that punish me whenever I dare to be happy. They grab on to me, pulling me back into their clutches, back into the despair, fear, and anguish that is major depressive disorder. On my walk home, they came for me. I had been happy, excited even, when suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, I wasn't. I wasn't anything, I was numb, and I longed for an eternal sleep. I've suffered with major depressive disorder for over a year now. Some days are good, others, not so much. Today was one of those weird, in-between days. For most of the day, while I was distracted by school and my upcoming test, I was relatively happy. I didn't have time to think about how I was feeling. Sure, I felt a little tired, but that's about all I registered. It wasn't until my walk home, when I was finally able to unwind, that I really started to think about how I was feeling. That was when it hit me, the low mood.
While a low mood is to be expected from time to time, it doesn't make it any less unpleasant. It is, however, part of the healing process. If I look back, my low moods come less frequently, and last for a fraction of the original time. Often times, I am able to get in control of my mood before the spiral starts. Initially, I couldn't even recognize that the spiral was coming until it was too late. Growing through a mental illness is rough. There will be relapses, there will be off days. These are growing pains, we experience them all the time. The most important thing to keep in mind, and I know this can be near impossible, is that it will work out. "I will get better, I will heal." |