Back in the Boat

I recognize that this past year has been an incredibly difficult one, and I've entrusted some of those dark moments to this blog. It's been a freeing experience to publicly write things that I'm thinking without fear of judgement or humiliation if someone were to stumble on it. This is the place I write what I feel and think about life and the world, without a mask.

In the past month, I've managed somehow to raise my head above the water and climb back in the boat of life. It's been a long 3 months since I admitted to myself that I was depressed and in need of an extreme makeover of emotion. I started saying no to things in my life that were unnecessary, unhelpful, or just a waste of my current pool of energy. I started pouring back into myself instead of waiting for someone else to do it. I started talking to Jesus again and telling him how I was feeling. August I was drowning but still kicking, which was different than July. By September I was coming up for air occasionally. I could socialize with smaller groups of people for short periods of time, and I found moments that I could be honest with myself and the people around me. By October, I was swimming back to the boat.

It's been a difficult recovery and I'm sure that I still have my moments, but it's the best I've felt in an incredibly long time. There's not one thing I can attribute this to. I didn't just wake up one day and decide I was going to feel good and get over whatever was bothering me. It was a process combined with good choices, self-care, good fellowship, hard conversations, prayer, and tears.

I'm thankful for the journey that I went through this past year. It wasn't my first fight with depression, but it was one of my deepest, longest ones. I don't want to be depressed, but I am thankful for it because it gives me a rare perspective on life, love, relationships, and despair. These lessons I hope never to forget as I course through the next leg of my journey. I want to use them to be a more empathetic, open-minded citizen to my community and circle of friends. Life is too short for us to be strung up on a pole for the sake of not wanting to die to ourselves.

This next journey is going to be one of the hardest I'll have ever chosen to go on, but the rewards will also be far greater than I've ever experienced before. It's scary thinking about the past that will be talked about, the things that my friends have to write about me, the waiting game...my life is in so many people's hands right now. I trust them all of course, but it only takes one thing to tip the scales. I hope and pray that Jesus keeps his finger on the scale...in our favor.

Moving forward, I want to continue this freedom from judgement blog that I started in a moment of darkness. I need a place like this that I can share in a general sense specifically what my heart is saying.