by Noah Clay
And, it’s ludicrous that we ask people to try.
So many people are currently going without treatment for mental health concerns, because they have been told they are supposed to. Since the disability can’t be seen, you surely must be bringing it out yourself. So, you’re brushed off, told it’s just stress, and advised to learn better coping and breathing techniques.
I know this, because it happened to me.
I even went so far as to think that after a few months, I had been fixed. I didn’t think I needed to stay on medication for my depression, because I was “just sad.” After a few months of medication to help me reprogram myself, I was ready to go back into the world.
I was so unready, though.
I was sick with no vaccine. I was cold with no blanket. I was alone with no community. That’s what depression does to you. It’s a disease of taking, when your own mind strips your humanity from you. While you have everything you physically need on the outside, your mind goes uncared for and unseen.
And just like your disability, you begin to feel invisible.
Chapter 20d
“[Anxiety] Attack Mode”
Naked.
In my bed.
In my head.
That’s where they say these demons are.
But, they aren’t.
They’re here.
In every breath. In every sound. In every
Brush of the blanket across my cold skin.
It’s the only thing I can stand, because anything else is a fire in my veins, my bones, my body-
Goes limp.
I can’t understand why this darkness pours down and all around-
I see nothing.
This room spins, but I don’t see it.
My heart hurts, and you know I feel it.
The rain is dripping down into my brain
Like those words you said yesterday
When you passed me in the grocery store.
I’m fine, though.
That’s what I told you.
I’m not, though.
That’s what my mind tells me.
Snap back into it.
Breathe how they taught you.
Think how they taught you.
Feel how they taught you.
WAIT.
Not that way.
No, the other way.
No, not that one either.
Forget it.
If it’s not helping, it’s because you’re not trying.
Trying for what?
To be sad?
To feel sorry for yourself?
No.
To feel better.
If you really cared, you really would
Feel better.
Everything is blurring.
Everything is dark.
I can’t breathe, and I can’t see.
But no worries.
My skin burns as that blanket lightly grazes my arm.
And, my heart burns as I take it on alone.
Chapter 20b.2
Man, I love a good caveat.
Earlier in this book, I divulged that I had joined a Christian dating site but deleted it after not having any success. My heart was in the wrong place, and I needed to let God do a lot of work on my heart before I pursued anything with anyone else’s.
So, I waited.
Ultimately, I grew tired of waiting. I told myself that I was ready. I had learned my lesson, and I was a much wiser and more mature woman for it. I wanted someone to be there to hold my hand through the darkness. But more than that, I wanted someone to want me back.
So, I joined a different dating site.
Now, technically, I reasoned that this was different than the first time. I had seen the warning from the first and used it to form the loophole through which I entered this one. I reasoned that the exception to online dating was if you were really prepared and rooted in who you already were before creating your profile.
I would never have admitted this to myself at that time, but I think finding a boyfriend was my way of proving to myself that I was normal. Dating was a rite of passage for young adults, and without being involved, it led to more questions about what was wrong with me. I wanted to fit in and be included by others, but even more than that, I wanted others to know it was safe to include me.
Society doesn’t like weird people.
I have so many great and terrible stories about my time on that site. I can look back on those experiences now and find humor in them. In fact, I could probably write a book full of humor and wit about my experience. This isn’t that book, though. It won’t have those stories. Instead, it will have only one story, but it will be an important story.
I still remember sitting on the bed in my dorm room when I saw his profile for the first time. He was tall and handsome, Christian, witty, and an English major. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how I would have so quickly jumped the gun and messaged him. I told my friends and family I’d found my perfect match and that this must be meant to be even before I’d received a response from him.
I just knew.
Sure enough, he responded to me. We matched and hit it off instantly. We started talking and ignoring all the red flags littering our conversations. I pushed aside my worry, because that’s what you do when it’s finally your time to shine. The show must go on, right?
There was just one crucial detail I didn’t see coming. Oh, I definitely should have. I just didn’t want to. So, I didn’t. Really, it wasn’t that important other than the fact that it was literally the most important thing I should have known.
Y’all, this guy was dead.
Physically? No, I’m not that stupid. Give me some credit.
Metaphorically, though, the man on the profile was dead. In his place stood a boy who had given his entire self to sin and destruction. The man of God he had once been was gone, destroyed, and in his place stood a hollow shell.
I had been trained well, though, so I could fix even this situation. I did what I’d been taught by every man before him to do: I made excuses for him. I told myself that I knew who he had once been. Who was I to question the power of God to transform and restore? In these excuses and my attempts to place God in this boy’s life, I ignored his fight against God and the path of righteousness. I assumed that this boy would want God to be present in his life.
I assumed wrong.
This boy broke my heart over and over, promising me the world while handing it behind my back to another girl. You see, he had recently dated a girl who actually had a baby with another man. In spite of this, the boy I was interested in became attached to this other girl and fixated on her. She was not a follower of Christ and had no interest in being one. So, the man I thought I knew found himself changing to "make things work" between himself and this other girl.
As anyone could else see from a mile, scratch that, one billion and seven miles away, things were not actually over between this boy and the other girl. They rode this wave of excitement and heartbreak like kids at a free carnival. One day, they were in love, while the next day brought sickness just thinking about each other.
All the while, this boy consistently video-called me well after midnight, heart-broken over horrible things she had said and done to him. I was there to support him and encourage him, but instead of giving him fully to God, I told God I would take care of this one. Within a few days of each Skype call where he would tell me how perfect I was and how I was everything he’d ever wanted, he would send me a text or an instant message from a fake account (so the other girl wouldn’t know) telling me we couldn’t talk anymore, because he was going back to this girl.
Time and time again, I watched Satan himself grab this guy’s heart and bind it. There was no fight and no search for righteousness. He was gone.
I kept hoping and fighting. In fact, I did both so much that one fateful night, he finally asked me to go watch a hockey game with him. I’d been staying with my best friend since it was my spring break, but she wa
s still in class. I watched movies while she was gone for classes and meeting and then we hung out together when she got back.
My parents were already (very understandably) upset that I had chosen to spend the week of my spring break watching movies in my friend’s dorm room instead of coming home to see them and the rest of my family. As much as I love my best friend like family, I still regret not seeing them during that week. I needed to be encouraged and built up by my family, even if through some tough love, instead of hiding from them in my friend’s dorm room.
I knew that what I was doing was wrong. I knew this guy was bad news and that my parents wouldn’t approve if they knew everything he had been doing. So, I didn’t tell them. I only told my best friend, who filled in for my parents’ words of wisdom. At the end of the day, though, she was just my best friend. So, I reasoned that I didn’t have to listen to her. I found myself asking her for her advice just so I could explain why she was wrong. And with her promise to not tell my parents, I was off on a three hour drive to finally meet this guy.
On the way, I started receiving instant messages from his mom warning me about the encounter. She told me it wasn’t right for me to have to drive the full way while her son didn’t leave his apartment. She also told me that he would get attached and that that was dangerous. She and I had become cyber-friends through a strange series of events but had never actually met in real life. I assured her that everything would be fine and kept driving.
I’ll never forget driving back and forth past his apartment multiple times, because I couldn’t find it. As it turns out, he had been outside working on his truck and saw me every time. He just thought it was funny that I was lost. After entirely way too long, I decided to take my chances and pull in to what I was sure had to be his building. He laughed at me, took his time with his truck, and finally took me upstairs to wait while he changed.
We then went to a restaurant to watch the game. He told me it was because hockey is best enjoyed with other people. While I sipped on a sweet tea and watched the game, he threw back drink after drink until the waitress said she couldn’t serve him anymore. I have never had alcohol, so I didn’t truly understand how much he’d had. In retrospect, I’m not totally convinced he even knew what hockey was by the time we left.
Still, we laughed, watched the game, and even sent pictures to his mom. As the game wrapped up and he (supposedly) sobered up, we decided to go back to his apartment so we could talk more. Truly, we did talk for hours. I felt like I was finally getting a chance to give a really good advertisement for my potential role in a relationship. So, I gave it my all.
After hours of laughing, talking, and him (incorrectly) teaching me how to play darts, we both realized it was really late. “Concerned for my safety,” he asked me to just stay the night, rather than driving two-and-a-half hours home at two in the morning. I accepted, texted my best friend to let her know, and told my parents nothing.
That’s when it happened.
I gave him a part of me I will never get back.
He made me a place to sleep and told me for hours how wonderful, beautiful, perfect, and more I was. I couldn’t sleep, so he sat beside me, gently playing with my hair and petting my face. He told me I was an angel he didn’t deserve and that the next morning he would call the other girl to end things once and for all.
Then he asked to kiss me.
Half-asleep in his apartment in the earliest hours of the morning, I said yes.
It felt as wrong as it was. It was brief, simple, and utterly heart-wrenching. And, I will never forget it.
Now, I know at least one person is reading this and thinking I’m being ridiculous with my description of my first kiss. After all, it was just a kiss. Right? To you, I ask you to remember how excited you were when it finally happened. When you had your first kiss, how excited were you to brag about it and tell your friends? I’m sure you were. You wouldn’t be if a first kiss really was “just a kiss.”
The truth of the matter is that a kiss, particularly a first kiss, is a tiny piece of your soul you place on the lips of another person. And with that person’s next breath, he or she breathes in that piece of you. You’ll never get it back. This man, who acts as if I don’t even exist, forever holds a piece of my soul.
Now happily married and with two fur-kids, I can’t tell you how badly I wish I’d given that piece of my soul to my husband. I so badly regret letting this other man have a piece of me. Now I’m not saying it’s wrong to kiss before you’re married. I’ll freely say that about sex, but not a kiss. What I will say is that you will feel really crummy if you give that kiss to a crummy person, because you’ve given him (or her) something he (or she) doesn’t deserve.
Dudes out there, this goes for you, too. Please do not think that testosterone is used to clean the feelings from your heart. You may put forth a tough exterior, but I guarantee that if you give a piece of yourself to a woman who doesn’t deserve it, you will know.
That’s how Satan works. Deception is his best skill, and will lie, steal, and deceive you if you are not careful. So, please remain in the will of God. You can thank me later for the pro tip.
Back to my story, this guy I’d been talking to was back with his "ex" the next day. After I’d left that morning, he went to the gyms and came home to her waiting. They talked, made up, and began dating again. I was blocked on social media. I was ignored via text (other than the one to tell me what had happened). I was forgotten. I was destroyed.
Not only was I hurting for myself, I was hurting for this and the incredible man of God I thought he had once been. He had given up the fight and decided to let the enemy win. He stopped going to classes, because he was already drunk in the mornings when it came time for him to leave for class. And, he stopped caring about anything but this other girl.
Through this all, this guy’s mother reached out to me. She knew I had more contact with him than she did, and she exploited that connection. I felt that she should at least know her son was ok in a time when he actively ignored and rejected conversation with his parents. I opened up to his mom as a mentor and a woman of God. But when I was no longer of use to her, she abandoned me and all I had confided in her.
At the urging of my parents, I gave this boy up for Lent. Being raised in the United Church of Christ until becoming Baptist somewhere around twelve, I was familiar with Lent but hadn’t actively practiced it for years. I felt like I didn’t have anything to lose, and this gave me a concrete way of trusting God’s providence in spite of me.
I told God to do what he wanted and was ready for what that may be, but the waiting was still terrible. I relied on God and knew he would make things clear on his terms and in his timing. I just didn’t enjoy it. And as I’ve addressed in earlier chapters, that’s ok. So many times, we, as Christians, tell each other that if we’re really sacrificing for God, we shouldn’t dislike it.
I’m sorry, but that’s not true at all. If you go on a diet, there’s a good probability that you’re not going to like it. You’ll persevere, because you know it is being used for something bigger. That won’t make cake less tasty, though.
So, I kept pushing forward and trusting God to work as he saw fit. And in the end, the man I’d lost sleep, peace, and my parents’ trust over did message me at the end of Lent (which also happened to be my 21st birthday). But, his messages quickly turned extremely hateful and hurtful, alternating from me hurting him by blocking him out of my life to being crazy, thus requiring him to push me out of his life. Everything was back and forth, and nothing even made sense. Even then, he had no clue who he was or what he wanted. But, it certainly wasn’t God.
Even still, I continued my efforts to work things out with this man for a week. After a week, he pushed me to my breaking point, which is no small feat. I simply cannot give up on people, because I have the naïve belief that all people will want to find the way to do what is good. I know God calls all people to him, so even today I have trouble understanding and accepting others
’ refusal to answer the call.
Ultimately, I finally allowed God to have his way in this area of my life, and I knew I had to be done with all of my efforts to make my own will be done. In this, I was met with backlash and hurt. The situation was filled with pain and brokenness, and it is still something I ask God about today.
But by grace, there was also restoration and healing. At the time, I thought this guy was just throwing away God’s will for us, and that the enemy was winning him. Yes, I had the audacity to think, even transiently, that the enemy was beating my God.