Baby Steps

I don't know how you define 'victory' when it comes to faith. I always thought victory meant getting over something - like, one day you wake up and realize you're not addicted to alcohol anymore, or you suddenly have super strong faith where you once were barely hanging on. I guess maybe I'm changing my mind about all that.

Over the past month or so, I've been dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety for different reasons. More than usual, actually. Seeing as how I have depression and bipolar disorder, it's not like I don't deal with it normally. There were extra pressures this year, though, and my usual struggle was unusually difficult, even for me.

(I know this sounds like a total fail, but hang in there.)

I've been praying and reading the Bible like crazy because of it. Instead of boxed, trite prayers (or none at all) I've been actually TALKING to God. Leaning on Him. Going to Him when I'm afraid, instead of going to one of the ten million other things I used to go to.

That's a victory, right?

And it's WORKING. That has to be a victory.

When I feel afraid (sad/exhausted/hopeless) I pray. IT WORKS.

If it wasn't so late, I'd say a lot more, but it's the middle of the night. It was just one of those things, though - I couldn't keep it to myself anymore. :-)

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A Life Lesson from Terri Cheney

I'm in the midst of reading Manic by Terri Cheney. Over the summer I decided to start reading memoirs by people suffering from bipolar disorder, but was pretty surprised to find there wasn't much out there. I finally found myself leaning over the counter at a local Books-A-Million, asking, bluntly, "Do you have anything written by someone with bipolar disorder?" I'm sure it was a strange request for them, but they produced Cheney's book and I've been reading it in the haphazard way I usually read books - in the five minutes I have before a doctor's appointment, or on the toilet.

At first, there wasn't much in the book that I could relate to. Cheney was a powerhouse LA entertainment attorney who worked with the likes of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. I'm just a freelance writer. Cheney writes a good bit about her money, connections, and success. I drive a 1997 Chevy and live in an apartment and don't have any big celebrity friends.

Cheney was also institutionalized more than once and attempted suicide numerous times. The suicide part I could relate to, having semi-attempted to off myself a few times as a teenager. Of course, my "attempts" were cries for attention, whereas Cheney really, truly wanted to die. And, to date, I have never been institutionalized. I've always thought my life has been crazy thanks to the BP, but now I feel incredibly boring by comparison.

So I've been reading this book and it's a great read, and I'm thoroughly fascinated and entertained, although I don't feel like I could ever sit down with Cheney as a girlfriend-sistah-child. There is only one thing I've been able to relate to so far...

Throughout the book, Cheney talks about how often she thinks of death, constantly wanting to be free of her troubled mind, always plotting her own demise. This part I could relate to. It's not the sort of thing you generally admit to people, but I'm admitting it now - I get this. It's nothing I've experienced lately. I've been pretty healthy for over a year, with few hiccups and certainly none I haven't been able to overcome. But it wasn't that long ago that I experienced the same things Cheney writes about as far as the constant obsession with death.

I would often drive through my town - a very rural and sometimes wooded area - thinking how easy it would be to drive my car into a tree at 100 miles per hour with no seatbelt on. At times I envisioned other ways of offing myself, right down to the nitty gritty details. It was a constant monkey on my back, a thought that was with me everywhere I went. Even on "good" days when I didn't feel particularly depressed, the thoughts still entered my mind at the most inopportune times.

What stopped me? The things that stop most people - too many people to love and be loved by, an underlying hope that eventually things would get better...fear of going to Hell. The last one was the biggie for me. If you give your life to Jesus, and then decided to end it, how does that go over with God? After all, I'm a Christian, which means my life isn't really my own anymore. I've had many people give me many different answers to that question but, in the end, I didn't want to find out the hard way.

I haven't finished this book yet, but I realized something tonight: death is my measuring stick. I haven't had those thoughts in a long time - I can't even remember exactly how long it's been. Like I said, I'm sure it has been at least a year.

But now I know that if I ever start thinking that way again, it's serious, and I need to ask for help.

Oh, and incidentally... if anyone knows of any other good reads, let me know.


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The Build-Up and the Crash

This is the story of my life: I am energized by having a lot of work to do and a lot of projects on hand. Exciting possibilities keep me lit like a firecracker. When things slow down, I find myself face-down at the bottom of the trash heap. I get up, dust myself off, look back and realize... oh snap, I think I was a little manic there.

Some people jump out of airplanes (seriously, I have a few friends who literally do this), some people do drugs, some people go on spending sprees, all in an effort to stay "charged up" and alive. I don't do any of that - though I did actually go shopping for clothes and shoes last night, but mostly out of necessity - but I still consider myself an adrenaline junkie. I'm always looking to stay high. For me, work does it. Trying to start a business, trying to get a new book published, and looking for fresh writing gigs all make me feel like I'm on top. Whether or not they pan out is another issue. The pursuit keeps me hopping.

I had a very difficult writing assignment - one that I thought should have been fairly simple, but turned out to be a nightmare. I had my abilities questioned and insulted in a very passive-aggressive manner. I also got sidelined by a stomach bug for a few days - the kind where you writhe in bed hoping for death. All of it turned into one big crash. I'm now in the process of trying to build that energy up again. This is why people with BP don't like taking medication - because the highs are so much more fun and productive. (At LEAST more productive.) It just always amazes me how little it takes to knock me over and make me feel like I have to rebuild from scratch again. That isn't very realistic - I DON'T have to rebuild from scratch, but when I'm depressed that's how it feels. It's like running a sprint race. You start out full speed ahead, charging like a bull, but you become tired and slow down, and some of us just sit down on the grass for a while to catch our breath.

I'm still not totally over the stomach thing, either. I am not sick to my stomach anymore, but I still feel weak and sorta lightheaded. I just want to get over it so I can get back to the gym. A stomach bug may be a great way to lose weight fast, but I think I'd much rather stick to the treadmill. Pin It

New Post at Broken Believers

I'm running a little behind, but my weekly post at Broken Believers is up. Pin It

The Right Approach To Depression

Happy almost 2010, readers. We're not exactly partying here - there's freezing rain outside and I have to work in the morning. We're watching movies with friends. What better time to blog?!?

Kudos to one of my favorite authors (and a Facebook friend, but of course), Dena Dyer for addressing her own depression on her blog - and for encouraging people to GET HELP.
I'm a little late stumbling across this post, but it's relevant any time of year! Pin It

My Testimony - My Religious Background

I always wanted to start my story off the way Ellen DeGeneres started her book, "My Point...And I Do Have One." Here goes nothing.

I was born, bred and lightly sauteed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I burst into this world on May 5, 1979. I am the youngest of three children and the only girl. My parents were older when they had me (Mom was 37, Dad was 43... which, back then, was pretty old to be having a baby) and my brothers are ten and twelve years older than me. My maternal grandmother came to live with us when I was 2. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and, at the time, it was a relatively new disease and many nursing facilities didn't take Alzheimer's patients. Yet they were able to find a nursing home for him nearby, so Grandma moved in to be closer to him and to help take care of us kids.

According to my mom, we had a religious family. If by "religious" you mean we went to funerals, then maybe that's an accurate description. My mother and her side of the family belong to the Mormon faith. My dad is an Episcopalian, and his side of the family is a combination of Episcopalian and Catholic. I recall going to church once in my life, when I was very young. It was my mother's Mormon ward, and I loved Sunday School and didn't want to leave and screamed and kicked when my mother and grandmother came to get me. During the service, we received communion (known in the Mormon church as receiving "Sacrament") and I really liked the bread. Nobody explained to me what the bread meant, so I assumed it was just a nice snack for the congregation. I took a piece and my brother took the basket from me and I yelled, "WAIT... DON'T TAKE IT, I WANT MORE!!!!" My father shushed me and I remember being good and PO'd that I wasn't able to snatch a handful before the basket was passed on.

That pretty much covers my childhood church experience.

Of course, my mother had visitors from her church periodically. She had friends from the Relief Society stop by at times, and the bishop would visit. When I was a child, I loved all of them and I loved their visits because they always brought me something. I used to sit in the living room while they did a Bible study (or maybe it was a Book of Mormon study, I really don't remember) and we'd pray. My mother participated because SHE was born, bred and lightly sauteed in the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church and it was the thing to do. I participated because it fascinated me.

I don't know how much you know about Mormons... but they don't drink alcohol or coffee or smoke, all of which my family did. Quite a bit, actually. So when the Mormons showed up, the coffee pot got shoved under the sink where the liquor was hidden, the smokes got stashed away, and my folks went through a bottle of air freshener at a time to get rid of the awful stench of sin.

Other times, church people were not welcome at all. Religion in my family was very much a mood-based sort of thing. I had a job to do, and I did it well: if I was outside and I saw the Mormon missionaries coming (it's hard to miss a couple of hot-looking teenage guys in black pants, white shirts and black ties carrying Bibles) I ran inside to warn my family. If they were not in the mood to be bothered spiritually, we all ran around closing the drapes, locking the doors, and we huddled together on the staircase in silence until the knocking on the front door ceased.

Ah, good times.

Now, my mother always told me the reason we didn't go to church was because she was forced to go to church growing up. They lived in Provo, Utah, where everyone was white and everyone was Mormon, and if you didn't go to church every time the doors were opened, something was considered wrong with you. Apparently, it didn't matter if my mother and her siblings were attacked by a pack of pit bulls and mauled within an inch of their lives - they went to church, and by golly, NOBODY COMPLAINED.
In an effort not to force church on her children, she just didn't take us at all.

It wasn't that my family didn't believe in God, it was just that everyone was afraid of overdoing it... so I supposed they underdid it.

However, that doesn't mean I got no religion growing up. My parents also enrolled me in a Christian preschool which I actually remember very well. I used to walk around singing "Jesus Loves Me" all the time and I played with wooden figurines in the likeness of Bible heroes. I'm pretty sure I accepted Jesus as Savior during that time of my life, though I don't remember it. I was totally down with Jesus, though, and it stuck.

A lot of the religion I got as a young child came from - believe this or not - my older brother's girlfriends. A few of them were Catholic, so when my oldest brother brought them home from college for Christmas (I remember 2 of them), they always wanted to go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for me, those girls thought I was cute so they let me tag along. I loved all of it - the liturgy, the Latin, the somberness of it all. I always had a longing for God, even before I knew the first thing about Him. I just felt like He was real and I wanted to know for sure.

At the same time all of this was happening, I was being sexually abused by a neighbor on a daily basis. My grandfather died when I was 4 and my grandmother began drinking a lot and slipped into senility. I often found her passed out on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, or mumbling incoherently in her recliner. My uncle - my mother's brother - started stealing money from our family (about a half a million dollars) and my mother sank into depression. I started eating to soothe my broken heart and by the fifth grade I was officially "Fatso." I was bullied mercilessly by kids in the neighborhood and at school.

By that point, I wasn't so "down" with Jesus anymore. I wasn't sure I believed in God at all. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just sitting on my bed and thinking about eternity, the size of the universe, how we got here, and whether or not we went anywhere when we died. Everyone thinks about that sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure it's not normal for a 10-year-old to think about it daily, or to the point of becoming suicidal...

It was around that age I knew something was wrong with me. I know that the problems in my life were enough to make anyone depressed, but it was just... different. I didn't know if I really believed in God or not anymore, but I did start praying - that God would kill me. I started asking God to take my life because life was too sad to live anymore. And I begged him, if He was real, to have mercy on me for not knowing what to believe.

I started to get a better idea of who God was when I entered the sixth grade... Pin It