Darkness

Friendly warning: This post deals with darker emotions. Proceed at your own risk.

It’s like my whole chest has been bound in iron, and no matter how many deep breaths I take, something deep inside me is still asphyxiating. It’s like I’m being held under water, and no matter how hard I kick, how much my lungs burn and muscles ache, I can’t reach the surface; I don’t die, but I’m getting too tired to keep thrashing. It’s like everyone else’s soul is a burlap sack, sometimes empty, and sometimes filled with butterflies, and mine is filled with wet sand. It takes all my energy to get me and my bag of sand moving, let alone participate in life. Even when I get my soul off the ground, I can only pretend to be able to carry it for a short time before collapsing again. It’s as if everything but my brain has been given anesthetic, and all my brain can seem to process are my damages and failures, my insufficiencies. It’s knowing I have important things to do, but being unable to break myself away from staring into nothingness long enough to prevent myself from ruining my own life. It’s the despair of knowing I am ruining my own life. It’s having the desperate need to shriek uncontrollably, and lacking the strength to do so. It’s finding out that even when I muster up the courage and strength to scream, it doesn’t make the feeling go away. It’s feeling like I am rotting from the inside out. And, drawing from an illustration made in Unshaken, it’s feeling as if I’m trapped in a dark elevator shaft alone under the rubble of a collapsed hotel, and knowing that 

no one can come to rescue me.

 It’s all of those things, and then the understanding that these feelings aren’t changing…perhaps they will never end.

So, I try to fake it. I can’t imagine a way to express those feelings, I can’t bear the thought of dealing with people after trying to share those feelings, I don’t want to burden someone I love with my darkness. I force smiles, and avoid eye contact. I deflect questions with distracting humor, or redirecting questions, or flippant responses. I make myself insanely busy. I have moments where I hide in a quiet place. I find secret, harmful ways to deal with the darkness alone.

Depression.

I hate talking about it. I hate admitting to having struggled with it. I hate the stigma the very word carries. I hate how flippantly it is used. I hate how people try to use it interchangeably with trivial words, like “sad,” “disappointed” and “blue.”

Depression is not sadness. It’s not a mood. It’s engulfing, raging, oppressive darkness. It’s sneaky.

People who struggle with depression can often feel like they are the only broken ones. People who bear this omnipresent darkness usually keep it a secret.

I am relieved to say that I am not currently dealing with it myself, but I remember how it felt. I remember feeling like I was the only one who knew this darkness. I also remember well intentioned people mistaking it for the blues, encouraging me to “just cheer up, tomorrow will be a better day.” I remember knowing a despairing feeling as I thought about the fact that tomorrow would not likely be a better day after all: it would likely be the same kind of day that every day has been for the past several months. I remember only partially enjoying the “up moments” in that period of time, because I had learned from pattern that they would only crash down again, and the darkness would hurt more after having almost felt normal for a few hours. I remember feeling like a ghost while being with my friends or family, watching them have a good time, and only being able to watch, not feel it.

Mostly, however, I remember feeling alone. And irreparable. And crazy. Why couldn’t I just buck up? Why couldn’t I conjured enough faith, pray hard enough, repent loudly enough for the darkness to go away?

That’s particularly something Christians have to struggle against. There are many within the faith who would like to point the finger at the faith of the sufferer, shake their heads at the need for psychology, or anti-depressants. Christians who need these things get convinced they should feel ashamed of their lesser faith.

But Jesus knew the feeling. “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” I know I have not been crucified, or felt the burden of all of humanity’s sin upon me, but I also know that I have heard my soul cry out a similar phrase. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” (Psalm 22:1-2) Jesus felt a deeper darkness than I ever have. Part of me believes that these phrases were recorded for us: the ones who brush against an inner darkness for a long extent of time, sometimes repeatedly throughout life, the ones who feel isolated by this darkness.

It is ridiculous that anyone can think that people who struggle with depression are of a weaker faith. It takes an enormous faith to dwell in a dark and lonely place for so long and still maintain a belief in a god who is still worth following--to believe in a God who loves you, when you cannot fathom loving yourself. The kind of faith that can stand to “be still and know” through that kind of inner death is the same kind of faith that walks on water. Read through the Bible. Look at the prophets and heroes of faith. A high percentage of them battled with the inner darkness as well. It’s right there, right smack dab in the middle of their amazing life stories. I don’t think it is a coincidence that so many people God used in great ways also struggled with depression.

I have never been more secure in the fact that my God is a great and powerful God than when I had nothing but paralyzing emptiness. That knowledge remains with me even after the darkness faded. 

That’s right: it fades. One way or another, we survive. Sometimes-No-Usually, we need help to survive, whether it is family support, medical support, psychological support, or all of it, and there is no shame in any of it, no matter what some self appointed authorities on faith might say. No matter what that accusing voice in the back of my own mind says.

And after the darkness fades, I am aware that it could come back someday, and I need to be prepared to deal with it again, but I also know that I survived it. There is a certain level of strength that comes from that knowledge. It’s a strength that I never knew before.

I have already confided in you that I hate bringing this topic up in public. So, why, you may ask, did I write such a long confession?  Two reasons. 

One: Perhaps if people who have never experienced the darkness read the brief summary of how the darkness feels, they will be less likely to make themselves a part of the burden for those in the midst of darkness.

Two: People who are in the midst of darkness or may someday be in the midst of it need to know that darkness is not forever. Perhaps if people who have made it through darkness talked about it while they are on the upside of the battle, then people who struggle with it will feel less alone…less crazy, more able to talk about it with someone they can trust. People who are asphyxiating no matter how deeply they breathe need to know. They need to know that it’s not shameful. It does not have to be fatal. 

If you have felt the darkness, are feeling it now, or have family members who deal with it (because it is genetic), you need to know: You are not a burden. You are carrying a burden, but that burden, that darkness, is not who you are. Don’t bear it alone. 

It’s okay to looked a trusted person in the eye and respond, “Broken.” When they ask, “How are you feeling today?” It’s okay to ask someone to hold your hand in the midst of the darkness. 

You would be surprised how many people have brushed against that darkness, too.