Do you know what depression feels like? If you do you know it's far from a good feeling. It feels like you've been sitting in a dark room for months with no spark of light to shed on the obscurity of your emotions. At least that's exactly how it made me feel. Depression entered into my life the year I found out I was going to go to a new school for sixth grade. I dreaded going back to school that year and when I did all of my fear was affirmed. I was made fun of a lot by this little boy just because I was new and that's when not only depression set in, but insecurity as well. I went through that year overwhelmed by the arduous school work and mean children making fun of me and bragging about their rich parents and big homes. What had bothered me the most then about these kids were that they weren't even being punished. The little boy was handed candy when he went to the principles office because of it.
I eventually learned to cope with it and when I went back to school the next year that little boy ended up liking me. For a short time that had helped my insecurities, but the depression still remained. I didn't see the worth that God saw in me and I consequently looked to a relationship to fill it. Deep down I knew this relationship would fail, but it brought me temporary happiness so I would constantly be battling against myself about these which only watered and fed the depression. When it did end up failing I hit rock bottom. I turned to pills and often found myself popping five vico at a time in my cold, dark room hidden in the basement accompanied by all kinds of depressing music. I would constantly wish that I would die and I definitely tested my limits with it. I was walking on the edge taking excessive amounts of ibuprofen to ease the pain when vico and muscle relaxers ran out and I didn't care. As I got older the depression got worse and I grew numb to all that was around me.
Later on in my life one negative thing after another kept throwing itself at me. I wasn't on good terms with my family. I wasn't living at home. I had no friends to talk to and once again I was in a relationship that was not of God's will. I continued to numb myself from everything and anything so that I didn't have to feel the pain of it all. My depression and stress got so bad that it gave me shingles at such a young age and yet again I was back into popping pills so that I didn't have to think about it all. When the relationship that I had been in at the time failed as expected that depression put me into an even deeper fog and again I let a bad influence into my life which bred into another relationship where they were manipulating, discouraging, and lying to me. That was the relationship I had talked about in Part One of this post. The day after he kicked me out I was supposed to hang out with my girl friend that I had made plans with a week previously.
I called her to ask if I could stay the weekend until I could figure things out, but I didn't tell her what was going on. When I arrived at her house after work that day she said that I could stay as long as I like. She was living with her parents who have known me my whole life. It was there that I was encouraged back to following God and it was there that I began to take small steps. I got to a place where I was able to move back with my parents and my family's relationship with one another had began to heal. After a few more "snags" in my life and after softening my heart once again I had decided to give my all to God all over again. Since then he has delivered me from that depression. Before I was living in a fog unaware of the true devastation of the events in my life. I was hopeless and had no desire to dream, but since then I have found my hope in HIM. He enabled me to dream again by using someone to encourage me in doing just that. I have found joy! The chains of depression were broken and I was set free! <3
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