It Exists
“Depression doesn’t exist.”
“If you believe in God then depression shouldn’t be a part of your life.”
“Depression is all in your head.”
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Psalm 42:11
Growing up, I was told that being depressed was not allowed. That it didn’t actually exist. So since it didn’t exist, and it wasn’t allowed, yet I felt it every single day from sun up to sun down, the only way to make it go away was to pretend that it wasn’t there. Not to myself, but to everyone else around me. So I became many things, everything but depressed. Actor, Jim Carrey once said, “depression is your body saying: “fuck you, I don’t want to be this character anymore. I don’t want to be holding up this avatar that you’ve created, in a world that’s too much for me.” And that’s exactly what I had done. I was the smart one, the funny one, the overachiever, the giver, the perfectionist, the fixer… and the list goes on. I became the puppet people pleaser. Whoever was around, I would read the room, and adjust accordingly. Until I had to lay alone at night and ponder this physical ache that lived inside my chest. An ache so sharp that it caused knots in my throat like I was being choked, and tears would just stream down my face as I tried to control my breathing so no one would hear me. This happened every night until I was about 26.
I began to dig for a grasp at reality, and I did it how I knew best: research. Being the A student that I was, I needed to look at multiple sources. Published journals, books, movies, documentaries, TedTalks, and because I am a believer, the Bible. I needed to know if I had made the whole thing up in my head, that this concocted dissatisfaction had any trace anywhere else in this world. Even now, as I write this I sit and question myself, was it all real? And like most things I conclude to in my findings, God is at the end, middle, and beginning of everything. Not that He intended for me to be depressed, or ordained my life’s destiny to be anything of the sort. But as my dearest King David writes repeatedly throughout the Psalms, to YET praise Him, to YET look to Him, to YET hope in Him…depression like any other ailment or illness of the mind is a state of being without God.
All of this lead me to so many other questions. What does it mean to be without God? Does God intend there to be so much pain? Why does He allow it? We see traces of King David being depressed, when he speaks to his soul, “why are you so downcast?” This was a daily prayer to myself when I was so unsure of everything. I needed answers. And then I realized David gives the solution right after he asks the question. “Put your hope in the Lord…” Hope by definition doesn’t mean to just long for the better but it means to put your trust into someone or something. God designed us to live in relationship, with him, with ourselves and with the people around us. Depression is the monster that isolates and weighs you down to be alone. Depression exists just as much as the next thing, and it can take over your life if you accept it, just like any other thing. But the remedy to all of this, and this is from my own experience of being in it for 20+ years, the only way out is to reconnect to our source of life that is being in relationship with God, through Jesus.
I will give more on this later, but this post is to validate that it is real. It’s not just in your head, it’s something that you will have to fight for the rest of your life if you keep relying on only yourself. But if you surrender and you look to Him and put your trust in Him, there is a way out. Surrender the person that you’re trying to play off as being, the character you’ve played for so many years. Healing from depression is surrendering from everything people have tried to make you become that you’re not, it’s allowing God to come in and heal you from everything that’s hurt you. It’s allowing yourself to get on the road to return home, and home is where you are who you are, in relationship with who created you in order to be in healthy relationships with yourself and the people around you. Allow yourself to come back home.