If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual’s pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.
~ Diane Wood Middlebrook
I have wanted to blog, to share my life, my struggles, in the hopes that it might help someone else, for years.
I’ve started several blogs, under several different names. I’ve given up on four, that I can think of off the top of my head.
There’s been different reasons why they’ve failed. But in the end, I gave up on them. The problems they had weren’t unsurmountable. I could have turned them around, kept them going. But I gave up.
As I’ve been prepping to get this blog going, I’ve been thinking a lot about why that was. Why did I give up? I love to write, and people whose opinions matter to me have told me I’m good at it. So why do I give up?
The answer I came to after a lot of thinking and talking about it is that I’m terrified. I want to share my thoughts with others. It’s one of the things I’m most passionate about, I would say. But to put myself out there, though I’ve never even kept going long enough to even gain enough of a following to have a negative comment, is terrifying.
The possibility of failure, that fear, has held me back from too many things already.
If you didn’t know, I have depression and anxiety.
I have them mostly under control. I have changed my diet, found coping strategies, and one of the biggest things – told the people close to me so that they can support me. My mental health is worlds better than it used to be.
But things can still blindside me.
I can wake up in the morning and just not feel like I can get out of bed. Like I can’t face the world, even if that’s just my apartment that day. And if I don’t have to get up to go somewhere, it’s more than likely I will stay there.
I can still find myself panicking in the middle of a grocery store. The smallest things can still send me into a tailspin.
But the reason I can say that I’m better is because now I can be in the middle of one of these situations and acknowledge what’s happening.
Yes, I am depressed. Yes, I am panicking.
How this is better is that rather than trying to push the feelings down, to try to make them go away, which doesn’t ever make them go away, I push through.
I make myself get out of bed and get in the shower so that the water on my skin helps me feel something. I get out, diffuse lemon or orange oil in my diffuser, put on some worship music, and write in my journal.
I make myself keep walking, just get the next thing on my list, and the next thing, and focus in on each next step so that whatever it was that was panicking me can’t be my focus. And I pray. I cry out. I don’t worry about how desperate I sound to God, because He doesn’t think I’m just overreacting. He takes me as I am, but He doesn’t leave me there. He turns the panic attacks turn into victories, not defeats.
I let myself not be okay. And rather than trying to push it away, I deal with it. I do things to make it better.
So, long story short – well, shorter – I’m at a place where fear is an enemy I can stand up against and face down.
I still have bad days, but I have more good days than bad.
With my God and my family and my friends beside me, fear is no longer the winner in my story.
And this blog is another step in that direction.
I will not let fear keep me from this.
Fear may have small victories, but it will not win in the end. Because my God has overcome.