Three times in the past two months, I have felt shame.
It shouldn't count, I know it shouldn't. I should be able to shake it off, shake off my "image" and embrace the reality of who I am and what I have been.
And when you're in the midst of it, sometimes it's easier to embrace it because you are incapable of fabricating another reality for yourself.
When you're out of the middle, you deaden the memory and try to live as though it didn't happen, try to prevent those around you from knowing the full extent of your darkness.
The worst part is, unlike drugs and alcohol addiction or eating disorders or the like, depression doesn't look good on a Christian testimony resume.
Depression makes people nervous.
They don't know how to respond.
Partly because it's not something that ends; it's something that becomes managed.
The potential for it to rear back up induces anxiety.
When we speak, we are not seeking for your pity, we are not seeking for you to feel bad for us retrospectively or to "hurt" with us. Not usually. And if we do, it's not to make ourselves feel better but to help you get some perspective as a human being.
Don't look at me like I'm a limping puppy on the side of a highway.
We're speaking the reality of who we are.
Belfast.
You have been my friend and enemy alike.
Students who don't know me want to follow my example and follow me to the Emerald Isle.
And for the fourth time this semester, I have been asked for my advice and to speak on my experience.
The first time, I was in the class I'm auditing. The topic of the day was clinical depression, and the professor (who is a friend of mine) asked me to speak on the "Dark Night of the Soul" and my hole of depression. Of course I spoke, but I was shocked, as I was speaking, how clearly I began to re-feel, though I had shut those emotions down for so long. It was like muscle memory. I spent my night wrecked, absolutely wrecked, near to the point of vomiting with grief. Took me completely off-guard.
The second time, a student who had been there with me asked for my advice.
While there, I had been so cloistered and such a whipping girl, that they did not understand me nor what my experience was like as compared to theirs.
I do not speak to those students.
The person who was their RA is not me. It was this weird depressive alter-ego of me that only existed for a year. I can't face them. I am ashamed.
We met and talked for multiple hours, as I explained to her the different levels of thought she needs to consider before making the same move as I did.
She's seriously dating someone. How serious is she about that? Because you can't make half-baked life decisions that take you across the globe without taking them into consideration or hearing out their opinion. It gets messy.
She's prone to depression. That concerned me. Climate is a HUGE aspect of living there.
You can't just think about the academic program and the "adventure" and the story you'll be able to tell people. Life is not a fairy tale. You have to live it day by day, hour by hour, both with those you love and completely alone.
And, while I tried to remain objective in speaking about the different categories she needed to think about, my own life colored behind the facts, and she looked at me with this face...
The third put me on a panel of other graduated and post graduated English majors (JBU graduates) in front of the English faculty and current English students.
We spoke on the process of applying to postgraduate programs and what they are like to be in.
They were specifically interested in me, the international student.
The moderating professor, who knew me well as a fiery student with enormous plans and enormous love, pushed and pushed and pushed with very specific questions, first to the whole group then to me personally, until finally I had to admit my whys.
Why I had had to come back home for a bit in December/January.
Why I was no longer dating Noah.
Why I was back at JBU and not at Denver Seminary.
And the whys are just so messy, and even without admitting any of the specifics, admitting to people I had been viewed by as so strong and passionate, was shameful.
Then it ended.
Then the looks.
Then the gentle hand on my arm.
Then the car ride to Fayetteville to Bible study and the gush of tears and shadows I couldn't help.
Such pieces of me I want to forget.
Such pieces of me, if forgotten, will recur.
I needed to change, and I needed Jesus so badly to wreck into me.
But there are things too sacred even to remember, especially to admit to people who cannot possibly understand the heart of what you are trying to communicate.
God is good.
and maybe also,
Think clearly about enormous life choices.
That is my message.
You hear:
Depression sucks. Feel so bad for me and my misery.
The fourth is yet to come. I've just received an email from a student, on referral from her history professor. What am I to say?
Her mere email is enough to bring tears to my eyes, in anticipation for the way it will drag my heart through its own muck.
My mother and boyfriend would chastise me with something to the tune of, "People don't need to know everything, Jamie."
Duh. I'm not some kind of self-named martyr with an agenda to broadcast her past wounds, but I am honest. And I answer questions with honesty.
Sometimes, though, that honesty makes me feel very small. Very very small.
