I spent all of high school thinking I was caught in some spiritual battle. I haven't really shared this with many people. I just needed to "trust God more." Spend more time reading my Bible. I used to cry to my mom, wondering why I didn't have joy, happiness, or surety, or any proof of God's love for me. I wondered why I couldn't relate well to people. I lived in this terrifying fear of... what I don't know. Ever since I could remember as a small child, I had a fear of God, that much I know. It followed me throughout my life.
And I still haven't worked through a lot of this stuff, but one thing I've learned is that I suffered from mental health issues from a young age. But because of the environment I was raised in, I couldn't get any help for them because I couldn't name them. Depression and anxiety were not real, they were simply spiritual battles. I turned inward because of all this, and it took me until I was 29 years old to get help.
I remember when I finally was diagnosed with my eating disorder. I knew I suffered with one for years. I knew that it took root when I was only 15 years old, growing and growing and often going in and out of remission until it took over my life for the better part of my late twenties. And when I got that diagnosis, it gave me strength to finally work on it because now I had a name for it.
It is the same with depression. I felt weak for starting therapy and medication. And when I started actually feeling better because of the medication, I felt confused. All this time I could have had this help. I could have felt more alive, more like everyone else. (Or at least what I perceived everyone else felt like. Because many people struggle in this same way and are good at hiding it as well.)
I guess I don't know where I'm going with this post. As I sat down to write it, this isn't even where I was planning on it going. But I feel so confused and angry with church, with religion, and I'm only just now actually processing that. I feel let down by the one place that should have been my refuge and yet was the source of so much of my suffering, and I didn't even know it until now. Most people felt hurt by church for different reasons than mine, but somehow I feel that church twisted my mind, a mind that was already very fragile and susceptible to this sadness, this darkness that has hovered over my mind like a dark cloud for so much of my life.
I believe in God, I have hope in who He is and what He has done and can do for me. My faith has changed as I've grown older, but it remains. But I struggle with the Evangelicalism I was raised in because I have such anger over it. My whole childhood was defined by it and I can't shake it.
Anyway, perhaps more on that another time. I probably sound like I'm walking around with this anger all the time, but for some reason as I've been dealing with my depression, this is what I keep going back to.
