In my personal experience, when I see large scale ugliness in the world, my depression does a little victory dance. My depression is like, “see! I was right all along”.
Same with set backs in my personal life. Someone I love back at a bottom, work being stalled, loneliness, and things in my apartment breaking.
As my depression gains ground from these sources of validation, it starts chipping away at my most reliable source of strength. My faith.
People are so quick to hurl the trite sentiments “everything happens for a reason” and “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “pain builds strength and character.”
Please refrain from speaking those silly words.
Because there exists a tipping point for everyone, and as you fumble towards yours, strength and character aren’t doing so well.
Some say that in order to become whole, you must first break. That’s always made sense to me. What then about life post-brokenness, when you thought a new worldview had coalesced, and you see that’s just a straw house about to be razed by a slight wind?
People pick up their pieces many times throughout a life. Endings are the surest thing out there: divorce, death, estrangement of any kind.
From where does the stamina come for those who have to pick up those pieces on a regular basis?
That’s a serious question that I ask myself all the time.
If I can’t meditate or pray because those activities lost their palliative properties, depression is celebrating a sizable victory.
And that’s the kind of month it’s been.
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