My daughter was coloring with her friend a few weeks ago as I stood in the kitchen working. I heard her ask the friend,
“Does your mom have anxiety?”
“No, I don’t think so. If she does, she doesn’t show it,” her friend responded.
“My mom does. She shows it,” retorted Mila, matter of factly.
Until pretty recently, my daughter didn’t know the extent of my struggles with mental health. The last episode happened when she was 4; it was easier to hide things then. At 6, she’s precocious and observant and mature for her age. This time, when I started to crack, it was much harder to hide and explain away.
She knew my parents weren’t just staying at our house for fun. She saw me sleeping on the couch during the day and the constant tears and the meals coming in. She saw me being held in the arms of my mom as I wept.
We talked and processed and she knew she was safe and I would be okay, but I hate that my daughter had to see that.
It’s the story that I want to stop sharing and wish desperately I could. It’s not the story I want for my life and it’s not the story I want for my family and friends that suffer with me through it.
I hate that “episodes” mark periods of my life. Every couple of years since my freshmen year of college, the version of me that is functional and happy and productive disappears suddenly, as intrusive thoughts and obsessions become more real than reality itself. When the OCD flares this intensely, all systems shut down. All my energy, time, emotional reserve is used on just getting through it.
I never think I am going to. The darkness overwhelms me in a way that feels too big to describe. I need significant support from family and friends to do even basic life tasks. I barely eat.
I am able to understand during these times that on the outside, there is nothing wrong. I can see that my life is beautiful and that I am blessed beyond the wildest dreams of many, but all that does is add shame to how I already feel. I know there are “real problems” and bigger suffering, but that doesn’t stop the torment that I feel in my mind. These episodes make me feel like such a burden to others.
I feel vulnerable and exposed and needy and dependent.
A friend texted me a few weeks ago apologizing she hadn’t reached out in awhile- she said she had been dealing with some of her own things but she wanted to check in and see how I was doing. I had to chuckle when I responded to her, because the day before I had pretty much verbatim sent that text to someone going through a crisis. “I am so sorry I haven’t checked in on you- it’s been a hard month. How are you doing?”
We joked that this is what life is. We are all dealing with our own crises, living our lives, and trying to come up for enough air to have the capacity for others’ junk and loving them through it. It’s feeling so much love for your people but like you can never support them enough.
My best friends and I joke that if anything, we are good at spacing out our crises so they typically don’t overlap. My mental breakdown came after a best friend’s first trimester. I was strong and steady for her then, but when her nausea got better, my brain must have known it could let it out and she could handle carrying me now. So thoughtful.
August was a hard month. It wasn’t the goodbye to summer that I envisioned, checking off our final things from the bucket list. It was harder than I can really describe and darker than I want to say. But this cycle, these dips into the dark valley, and then the slow and shaky ascension back to my normal self has given me a beautiful perspective and a deep appreciation for any moment of any day that I feel okay- which thankfully, is often now.
A perspective shift that actually helped in some of my darkest moments, was being grateful that there were any hours of any day I wasn’t deeply depressed, and could feel any joy and moments of “normalcy” at all.
During my episodes, the evenings are almost always better than the mornings. The mornings came with so much darkness, but by afternoon, typically the fog would lift just enough I could see my way out.
I told a friend recently that I am so grateful to have any good moment. Even the mundane ones start to feel like a treasure.
Boredom is a gift.
The fact that I have any good days is grace. The fact I am in a position of such comfort, luxury really, and can enjoy any moment of my life is grace.
It’s a take on “it could always be worse” but it points my soul toward gratitude for any moment I can enjoy, instead of grief for all the moments mental illness steals.
The purpose of my life is not ease and comfort and happiness. Ease and comfort and happiness are things that many billions of people in our world rarely, if ever, get to experience. I get angry at my brain for the seasons of pain I go through, but those good 3 hours of the evening?
A gift.
Any morning I wake up without my hands reverberating with anxiety, fear coursing through my veins and panic threatening to take me down, is a gift.
A crisp walk around my neighborhood.
Being able to make someone a meal again.
Savoring a cup of coffee, appetizers with friends, reading aloud to my children in a heap on the couch.
Worship music with the windows down.
Making a bouquet of flowers again.
Deep, rich community.
Having the ability to look forward to something and remembering how that feels.
Though the suffering from mental illness is occasionally profound, it has allowed me to deeply treasure and appreciate any moment I am not in the darkness.
Everything feels so much brighter after you’ve been there.
Though I pray for healing, after all these years, I understand this may be the thorn in my side until I’m made whole again.
I am thankful for the voice of my Shepherd, whose voice sounds nothing like the accusatory alarm bells that bring me to the ground in despair.
I am grateful for medication and treatment and resources that until recent decades, people suffered without.
I am grateful for dinner at our friends’ house when all I could do is stare ahead with tears streaming down my face. They invited us in when we could bring nothing. They prayed over my tired body and they ate Costco pizza and gave the kids something to look forward to when their world was rocked by my instability. They are neighbors and they are family.
I am grateful for friends at 6:30 in the morning that listen to my heaving sobs and stay on the phone with me so I don’t have to be alone.
Friends that took me in their car for a ride like a Golden Retriever. I stare out the window in silence and remember there’s a world outside of the four walls of my house and the torment of my brain.
Grateful that what started as strangers connecting on Facebook about mental illness and our faith, turned to Starbucks in my driveway and the kind of understanding you only have when you know that darkness, too.
I am thankful for timely drop bys with flowers, a loaf of warm sourdough, voice memo prayers, Tater Tot Casserole and raspberry pie delivered on a Friday afternoon, and a community that mobilizes “crisis mode” in an instant. Sadly, they know the drill.
I prefer to be the “Crisis Mode Activator.” I prefer to be the one saving the day, and it is deeply humbling to depend on others the way I sometimes have to.
Ultimately, I am thankful for the gift of any good moments and any good days and I don’t want to waste them. The fact that I often have years between these times is a gift. While my brain is rarely easy to live in, many times, it’s manageable.
A gift.
Psalm 143 was of great comfort to me during the month of August:
“So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed.
I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you; I thirst for you like a parched land.
Answer me quickly, LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.
Rescue me from my enemies, LORD, for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”
The promise of His level ground over my tumultuous, cracking one is one I cling to. While my mental state, emotions, circumstances change, my Good Shepherd does not. Over the last 6 weeks, I have begged Him to amplify His voice, guide me in His path, and to drown out all the others.
Even if the episode never relented and I lived the rest of my life without relief, I still have had more abundance, more blessing, more joy than billions ever will in their life. And beyond that, the knowing that when the race is over, I will experience that joy with my Savior forever.
May His good Spirit lead me on level ground, through all the good days and the bad ones.
A few of the good ones:
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