Written December 9, 2016. I shared this with my team before posting it.
I read a blog the other day titled “dear suicide”. If you have not read it, please do before you read this.
http://masonsmith.theworldrace.org/?filename=dear-suicide
I read this blog and though, “Wow. How brave of him to share this.”
When I read it, all I could think was how raw, vulnerable, real it was.
The Jesus placed the word “share” on my heart. So I shared it on Facebook.
“No. Be real. Share your story.”
So hear we go. This is me in my most vulnerable form. This is the real things I face daily.
When I wake up each morning, I face a battle. The battle is whether or not to get out of bed. Yes, you may be thinking, “oh, typical teenager, wanting to sleep all day.” I wish that was it. But no. This is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
This is depression.
When I was 14, I faced my first interaction with this monster. I sat in my room, tired of fighting, tired of brokenness, tired of being tired. I wanted the pain to be gone. So I sat there, with a knife to my wrist. I was ready to go until a voice came over me asking what I was doing. When I couldn’t give an answer, I stopped.
For the next 2 years or so, I held it together, putting on a show for everyone around me. Smiling when someone said smile, laughing when they told me to laugh. But I had stopped being me. I stopped hanging out with friends, always came up with excuses, but never showed how broken I really was. When I would get home and go to my room, I locked the door and took off the mask. I would sleep and I would cry. But never in front of anyone. Not even my own mother.
For 3 years of my life, I was fed with lies, telling me, “No one cares what you are going through. You don’t belong. You are so broken and can’t be fixed. Just give up.”
When I was 16, I just could not take it anymore. I was so tired of being this person.
One of the hardest days of my life was when I told my mom I was not okay. I had to finally admit I was broken and needed help. When I told her I wasn’t okay and she said, “I know,” I felt free.
I finally felt like this secret I had been hiding for so long, was no longer a secret. At least not to my mom.
I started going to therapy again but I also went to the doctor. I was put on antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, and a sleep aid.
For about a year, this was my life. Medication to help me feel more, well, “me” again.
The summer of 2015, I went to Russia on a mission trip. While there, I weaned myself off my medication because I didn’t need it. I was good, I was me, I was finally full of God and not broken.
Between that trip and launch, my depression was okay. I didn’t struggle with it. I was happy, content.
This mission has been absolutely killing me. Not because ministry is bad, not because my team doesn’t love me, but because I have dealt with this stupid thing called depression.
The past two months, I have felt so broken, to the point beyond repair. When my team talks about how sad they are to already be 3 months in, I don’t say anything because all I see is 6 more months of fighting this thing. All I see around me is happy, smiling people, where here I am faking it again. I call my mom crying because there is this dark cloud lingering over me. I have looked up flights home on multiple occasions.
This mission has been wonderful and it has been hell… all at once.
And to be quite honest, I am not sure what the point of writing this is, except to be vulnerable and share my deepest, darkest, hardest struggle with you. This is me. This is me being the most real I can be in this moment.
After Russia, I had this expectation that because I thought my depression had been “fixed” with Jesus on a mission trip, living life on mission would be a cakewalk. Now, even though that is not true, doesn’t mean God isn’t here. He is trying to teach me something, I am just not exactly sure what that is yet.
