Lingering Scars

My depression started in the fall of 1998, my junior year of high school.  The brunt of my depression faded in the fall of 2008, when I was doing mission work in Ireland.  Those stories will be expounded upon, but what I want to talk about is the lingering scars of depression.

If people were to ask me if I was still depressed, I feel like saying no, and perhaps I am right.  I no longer feel any of the overwhelming negativity that ruled and tortured my brain for a decade.  I no longer get the feeling that Satan has my brain in his hands, and is squeezing it at his leisure.  The darkness has been lifted off of me.

But, I don't feel whole either.  I don't know if there is perhaps just the slightest effect of depression still on me or not.  Or perhaps, it is the natural outcome of being tortured for far too long.  My heart has been mangled, my soul shredded, and now it must slowly be mended.  I knew it would take time, but just like those in the throws of depression, I struggle each day to believe that it will get better, that this isn't my life.  If it is, then I will be just fine.  Compared to what I came out of, this is paradise.  To finally have the pain of the negativity finally stopped.  It is bliss, and I am thankful.  The question is one of restoration.  It is one I have yet to ask others who have survived.  Can I be whole again?  Will my heart ever sore again?  There have been moments, teases, to let me know my heart still could do it, that it wasn't just some fluke of childhood.  It will return to itself, and I just weep in gratefulness.  Then it fades, and I am left feeling just ok.  Always okay.  Not up, not down, just okay.

I am going to believe it will end.  Why shouldn't I?  I would rather spend my life pursuing it, and even if it is never realized in this life, that doesn't mean it couldn't have been.  Yes, I will fight for it.  I will fight in hope.  I will fight.

My Resumé of Pain

When we are looking for answers, we look to those who are authorities on the subject.  At first glance, we don’t ask a brain surgeon how to rebuild the engine of our truck.  Nor do we ask a mechanic to excise a tumor from our brain.    Imagining both scenarios is pretty funny. 

“Nurse, I am going to need the 16mm crescent wrench.  Can somebody cauterize that leak over there?  We’re losing oil pressure fast.”  Or, on the other hand, “Frank.  Frank!  Hand me one them scalpels o’er there.  I said a scalpel you idiot.  Here.  Hold this ‘til I get back.  FRANK!” 

We go to the people who know what they are talking about.  We go the authorities.  Yet, when we think of an authority on something, we usually only think of one type of authority, when there are two. 

Let’s pick a subject, say, the jungles of the Congo on Africa.  One authority is going to be the Biologist, or Geologist, or whatever –ist or –ian there is that has devoted their studies to the Congo.  They will be able to tell you the species unique to the area, or their theory on why the land is shaped the way it is, or why they think the people of the region all wear what they wear.  Or, let’s take Joan of Arc.  The historian will be able to tell you the effects of Joan of Arc’s actions had on Gaul, and indeed the world.  They will be able to numb your brain with data.  This kind of authority is the authority most people think of.  This is the authority of study and academia.

Yet, there is a second kind of authority on a subject. The Zoologist may be able to tell you ever subspecies of scorpion in the jungle, but the man who survived walking through it can tell you what it was like to be stung by one.  The geologist can tell you how the mountains were formed, but the survivor can tell you about how he climbed over them.   He can tell you what the stones felt like against the grip of his hand, or what the sensation was of reaching the top and looking back over the canopy of trees below.  The historian can tell you where Joan of Arc was born, who is family was, ever town she lived in, and then some.  But the man who loved her can tell you what her voice sounded like, how soft her touch was, or the feeling given when listening to her laughter.  He can tell you this, because he didn’t just know about Joan of Arc, he experienced Joan of Arc.  This is the authority of experience.

I am not a Psychiatrist.  I am not a psychologist, or a counselor.  I cannot tell you exactly what causes depression (though neither can the doctors).  I don’t know what they know, and I don’t want to, frankly.  I will stick with writing and photography.  However, I know depression.  I do not have a vast academic knowledge of depression.  Yet, I have surely experienced it.  So intimate am I with the Abyss (my personal metaphor for depression) that, though I try with great vigor, I cannot seem to forget it’s touch. 

Just how well do I know it?  One time I was talking to a girl about her struggle with depression.  She was battling tooth and nail to press on, to just keep breathing.  Its grip upon her was crushing, though unsurprisingly she masked her pain with a beautiful smile.  Her friends were encouraging her to listen to me, to be encouraged, but they words fell deaf.  I had no understanding.  Did believe that I could possibly fathom her experience, her pain.  “No,” she would say, “You don’t understand.  Maybe you experienced some depression for a while, but I have been this way for over two years!”  Without thought, my hands flew out in front of my face and opened, fanning out all ten of my long, narrow fingers, and I just held them out for her to look at.  After a long silence, I focused past my fingers onto her face, knowing that my own reflected my deep sense of insult.  I dropped my right hand and three fingers on my left, leaving only my thumb and index fingers extended.  “You,” I said.  Then, I brought back my right hand and opened all my fingers again.  “Me.  I didn’t experience a single moment of happiness for over ten years, closer to twelve.  I understand your pain and then some.”  I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, but there was certainly a sensation of indignation.  I had enough people doubt my pain.  They doubted its endurance, its severity, even its very existence.  She would not doubt it.  From that point on, the walls went down.  Knew I understood.  Indeed, she then began to wonder how I survived ten straight years of such a hell. 

I will tell you about the rest of my struggle later.  The point of this first letter is to say that I understand depression.  I may not have experienced it exactly like you, as you have not experienced it like me.  Yet, in the end, there is a bond, a tie.  I know depression.  I have survived it.  I have spent over a decade in the trenches thinking about how to beat it, about how to survive it.  Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how to stop it, merely how to press on through it with hope and courage, to make much of God in light of such trial.