The Old Familiar Fog

My old seminary professor wrote about depression recently. He had some intense struggles. He said it’s like, when you don’t want to die, but you don’t really want to live. It’s a dark place to be.

I guess everyone has a little depression sometimes, when circumstances go awry. Someone you love dies, or gets sick, or something really big and important doesn’t go the way you’d planned. It’s a slippery slope for some though, when the fog never lifts.

The thing with bi-polar is, you swing between highs and lows. And when you swing really really high, there’s going to be a low low. The question is more a matter of when it will happen, not if it will happen.

I don’t know that I know what triggered my depression when it hit in 2009. Loneliness, self-loathing, jealousy, feeling hopeless and like circumstances would never change. Nothing like feeling trapped in a life you didn’t want and didn’t ask for.

I was depressed for a good 10 years. That’s a long time to be depressed. I did struggle with depression in college some also.

I don’t know. I’m trying to think through this again because, I’m depressed now. What happened in 2019 that changed how I viewed life to a positive view? 

It’s confusing to look back at because… it was a dating coach who changed things for me. Not a good counselor/therapist, not a psychiatrist, not a trusted pastor that knew me well… a dating coach! So… it’s really hard for me to think that hiring him was a mistake when he had such a positive impact on my life! And, I didn’t follow all his advice to a T and I wonder if I’d done that would I have ended up getting married to the man of my dreams who also was wealthy enough to absorb the cost I’d spent on the dating coach? 

And it’s really hard for me to not blame the pastor for watching me struggle with depression ten years and not help me get out of it.

He knew me… but he didn’t know me. He knew a shell of me. He assumed he knew me well. I wonder if he knew me at all.

It’s not necessarily fair to hold him to that, because, I lost touch with myself as well. I resigned myself to a mediocre existence.

But he did let me down, and hurt me.

He didn’t do it on purpose, though. I should show him some grace.

We ended things on a rocky note. I had been very upset with him about using the enneagram at church, and left his church because of it. When I went to the hospital, and he learned that I could have visitors, he called and said he was going to come visit. But, he couldn’t come until the day I left. So I didn’t see him in the hospital after all.

It’s probably a good thing.

We are on such different wavelengths. I remember calling him to see if people from the church would be able to give me rides or cook meals. He attached it to me needing to be a member of the church and being under the care of the church, and said if I was not a member of the church he could not commit any help to me. We went back and forth, and I got upset, because I didn’t understand, and still don’t completely understand, why church membership is a pre-requisite for helping a friend in need. My mom’s friends from all different paths, not just Calvary members, helped out, and if they could help out not having the church membership bond with us, I don’t know. It just put me out. It still puts me out when I think about it. Why would I want to go to a church again that gives a former member the cold shoulder. Especially when that member left for a REALLY GOOD REASON, it STILL burns me up they are using an OCCULT TOOL in the church. Really makes me angry when I think about it.

When I first confronted him about the enneagram issue… I yelled at him.  Via Zoom. He was concerned that I wasn’t going to small group, and I was like, I’m put out because of the enneagram, and he was like, you don’t even know what I’m doing, and I was like, I don’t need to know there’s not a good way to use an occult tool, that demons inspired!!! And then he insulted my intelligence. So yeah, I yelled at him.

So… when we were talking on the phone right after I got out of the hospital, I don’t know what he said, I don’t remember the conversation, I remember getting angry and more angry on the phone and not wanting to yell again and the best thing I could think of to do was hang up the phone. So I hung up on him. And I threw the phone across the hall.

I just… he makes me so angry. And. I do feel bad and want to make things better between us, but I fear he will just make me angry again, and I’ll yell at him in person, and it’ll be worse. So… I don’t know what to do.

I do miss my old church though. I miss the worship service and the liturgy, the intimate sharing of the Lord’s supper every week, the music, I really miss the music, the preaching… mostly though, I miss the people.

I had some really good friends there, that loved me and invested in me. I had some older women in the church who discipled me. I had some close friends my age, and even though they were married they opened up their lives to me.

You can’t just replace a really good community.

So… maybe my current depression is part grief. I’m grieving having lost my friends.

It wasn’t supposed to have gone like this.

That… and I know I need to get my life together. 100% ownership of it all. It’s empowering not to be the victim. (Which is why theories that are teaching some people are victims no matter what they do because of their race are BAD… that’s probably a rabbit hole I shouldn’t go down now but I could, I may earmark that thought…) And it will help me pull things around. Because I don’t like being depressed, it’s really not fun at all! But there are things I need to do that I can do… like, start eating healthier and exercising regularly again, socially… I am really struggling socially getting to know new people better, I’ll work up the nerve to ask someone to hang out, and then we can never get our schedules to sync, and it’s not good, I need to talk to people soon, I’m going crazy!  (If you’re reading this, and thinking it’s about time she sees it, well… I’ve always been crazy there’s a continuum it’s just a matter of how crazy I’ll go.) So… I am going to re-calibrate things tonight. Write out some new goals. With steps in how to achieve them. My friend Tim thinks I just need to get back into selling life insurance to get to a better place. I’m not as sure I’m ready for that. I see his points, I just… I know what it takes to have a successful business, and it’s a lot, I’m not sure I have it all to go there right now. Anyhow, I do need to make some career goals and need a new job, but since I’m working for my mom, I need someone to replace me and work for her, before I really jump into something new.

Maybe I won’t stay stuck in the fog that long after all.