The Post That Took Me Three Months to Write

You've probably heard that song, "Human." It's, like, annoyingly popular. It's on the radio all the time.

There are a few lines in the song that I particularly relate to:

I can do it
I can do it
I'll get through it
I said something very much like this to myself at the beginning of my junior year of high school. I was taking two AP classes. I was in drum line as well as in regular band and I did two musicals, one right after another: I had the script for the second one before the run of the first one was even half over. In addition, I had to start thinking about my future, for scholarships and college applications loomed large on the horizon and I'd just come of an age where it was appropriate to date.

Add to that the typical responsibilities of family, friends, and church. Add to that all the little dramas and discouragements of being sixteen years old, and you'll perhaps see why by the end of the first semester of that year, I was in deep clinical depression.

Optimism and perseverance are usually not the cause of depression, but in this case, they were. When I was stressed out, instead of taking time to talk it over or relax I would tell myself, "No worries. Tomorrow will be better." I was so focused on the someday when everything would work out that I didn't take care of myself in the meantime.

I could do it. I could do it. I'd get through it.

Just before Christmas, an emotional disaster completely toppled my house-of-cards-like well-being. I was a wreck. A car wreck, a train wreck, a plane wreck--pick whichever you please. I was just as mangled and tragic as any.

I'd like to describe that time of depression to you in specific detail, but I can't. Most of those days felt the same. Things were gray. I cried a lot. I had little motivation to do anything, and most emotions were beyond my reach. So a lot of my memories of that time have melted over the years into a gray, weepy haze with all the variation of a flatlining heart monitor.

It was awful. I highly don't recommend it to you. However, I am forever grateful that I went through the experience. I was completely torn apart and then stitched back together again--and the new stitching was stronger and of better quality than the stuff that used to be there.

Later I discovered that my experiences with depression gave me the courage and tools that I needed to face other difficult situations and help people with similar experiences.

The Lord. He works in mysterious ways.

P.S. The title of the post is accurate. I've known for a while that I needed to make some posts about this stuff. It's just surprisingly hard to get started.