Maybe… Just Maybe

One of the most challenging things I struggle with when I’m depressed is the why. Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this? There would be nights when I would cry my eyes out. Asking God why and what I did to deserve this, apologizing again and again, saying, “Just tell me what I did, and I’ll apologize! Whatever it was, I’m sorry I didn’t mean it.” So desperate to get to the root of all the hopelessness and despair. Clearly, I must have done something awful to deserve everything that has gone down in the past 16 years of my life. (I can’t speak for the first 6 because I don’t remember much).

Not that there weren’t some happy times mixed in there; of course there were. They were just all overshadowed by the dark cloud of misery that I refused to acknowledge or accept until I ended up in therapy 3 months ago and had to start dealing with it. It really kind of made it worse. When you finally think about and accept all the feelings, hurts, and sorrows I’ve pushed aside and avoided for so long. Then, when it hit me, I was like, well, I must have done something awful to deserve all this crap I have to deal with now. I realized that my life had crashed and burned a long time ago. I just hadn’t recognized, felt, or acknowledged it till recently. I felt like I had been robbed of the past 16 years of my life, like, come on God, you call that a life? I’m not entirely sure how I made it to 22, but I’m assuming it was out of sheer stubbornness.

It was like the same year, same problems, but different people, and it got worse every year for 16 years. While reflecting on all the things in my past that I didn’t deal with or had straight-up buried, how could I not think I deserved it. People always say, “why is this happening to me” or “This has to be happening because of something I’ve done.” I thought and thought about it because surely there had some something I’d done for all of these bad things to happen. It was all about me, me, me, but one day, I heard Graham Cooke’s sermon, which talked about how trials are opportunities for God to teach us something. Of course, when you are in the middle of pondering whether life was even worth the trouble like I was, that is the last thing you want to hear. However, now that I can use the thinking side of my brain instead of just the feeling side, I’ve finally been able to think about it.

What if maybe, just maybe, our hardships and misfortunes had nothing to do with us. What if these things weren’t happening TO us or BECAUSE of us? What if they were happening FOR us. In one of Graham Cooke’s sermons or CDs or whatever you want to call them, he said something that really stuck with me. He said, “The thing that grieves God most in some of our situations is that we’ve gone through all this grief and all this pain, and we haven’t claimed the things he wanted to give us… we just got bitter.” I know some of my readers aren’t Christians, and if you aren’t, think of it like this. We just went through all that crap and didn’t gain anything from it. If we view hardships and trials as opportunities instead of God or the universe trying to punish us think how much better that would work out. Instead of walking away from it with even more bitterness and anger, what if we walked away with something that could benefit us. I’m still amidst one of the biggest trials I’ve ever faced, and even now, it seems like nothing is going my way. I legitimately can not see hope for my current situation. However, I am no longer hopeless.

Because; instead of asking what have I done, I’m asking what can I do. Instead of saying my life is hopeless, I say that my life isn’t over yet. Instead of saying, “why is the universe against me right now” I say, “what can I take away from this unfortunate situation.” I’m not saying that when crap happens, you shouldn’t be angry (by all means, go for it), but maybe also think about what you can take away from the situation other than anger. Because every experience, good or bad, is an opportunity to grow. I’ve still got a long way to go, and even though these past three months have royally sucked, and my life so far is nothing to brag about, I really don’t care. I’m so over it you would not believe it, and here is why.

If there is one thing I have learned in therapy, it’s that living in my past only hurts me. No amount of bitterness, anger or regret is going to change any of it. It’s over, done with, already happened. So instead of being bitter about it, I’m going to find out what I can learn from it. That way, however awful my life has been, the future can be much better. So watch out world, I’ve got a good 70 or so years left, and I’m coming for ya! ‘Till next time, Hang in there.

Sincerely,
LIBD