I have a disease...

These have been some of the hardest months of my life.

I didn't think that life would be better once I got married. I wasn't underneath some naive impression that the second I had a ring on my finger my life would suddenly turn into this fairytale. I knew it would be so hard to leave my family, my life, and everything I held dear behind to follow the man I loved on his journey in life. I knew that I would struggle to make friends and recreate a life.

But I didn't expect the painful sex and the Navy screwing us into financial strain. I didn't expect the sorrow of hearing my baby sister bawling on the phone to me that she missed me. I didn't expect that when I married the man of my dreams that all my nightmares would come crawling out from under my bed to haunt me. I didn't expect the endless tears and the countless times that he would have to hold me while I couldn't breathe through the sobbing from my soul.

But what I didn't expect the most was the despair, the demons that I thought I put to rest coming up from the grave to drag me back down with them. I didn't expect to feel the darkness creep in my window every morning and chain me to the bed and hold me hostage. I didn't expect day after day of sleeping for 14 hours straight just to avoid the anguish of my heart.

Depression.

I expected you to come knocking.

But I didn't expect you to take over my home and turn it into a dungeon.

Depression is the hardest thing for me to talk about. Why? Because I feel weak. And I hate weakness in myself. People can destroy you with your weakness.
The mask of happiness is easier to wear than the truth of my heart. Why? Because I can't handle the judgement that I feel from every eye who sees who is hiding underneath happy me.

This is not a pretty post. This is not a post about hope and love and Jesus. This is a post where I am going to share the darkness of my soul. Why? Because I am tired of hiding. And I am ready to find help.

They always tell you that the first way to start your recovery from something is to admit you have a problem.

Well here I am, admitting that I have a problem.

I have struggled with depression since I was 12 years old. It hit me at a young age... I can remember the first signs of despair. I can remember the dark poems that I never showed anyone, the drawings of the broken, bleeding hearts... I remember when a boy told me he liked me and it was the first boy to ever like me back and for a moment I felt bliss. And then two weeks later he crushed my heart... And I remember a friend having to force me to take a knife out of my room. I remember how everyone in my life kept dying or leaving me. I remember never feeling like it was okay to cry. I remember the nights crying and sobbing in my room, praying that no one would hear me because I thought that no one would understand or that I would be punished for feeling that way. I remember never fitting in anywhere. Always feeling alone and left out of everything, two steps behind everyone I wanted to be friends with. I remember hating church and everyone in it.

I remember finding a place of refuge and crying Friday after Friday on the floor during youth group worship, praying that God would help me just get through another day. I remember standing in a circle with the discipleship group praying and for the first time in my life crying in front of complete strangers. I remember my youth pastor Joel literally holding me up from falling on the ground because something in me broke and I couldn't stand under the weight of what I had been carrying on my shoulders for too many years.

My life went up from there for a few years. Made some good friends, found people I could trust. I remember falling for a boy. And I remember the abusive relationship that followed. The separation from all my friends and family because he wasn't ever getting enough attention. The suffocation that came from not being able to talk to any other man without wrath and anger and car doors slamming in my face and getting abandoned place after place by myself and being ignored for hours and hours and hours because I did something that made him angry and the screaming of "What the hell is wrong with you?" for laughing at his sister's boyfriend's jokes...

When I finally got out of that relationship, I swore I would silence my voice again. I would never break myself down for someone else.

And then I met the next boy who promised he loved me for more than sex. I remember the nights watching the sunset on top of parking garages and driving through floods to get to rock climbing places. I remember my first kiss with him. I remember feeling romanced and cherished and like something in the world was about me for once... And then the forcing himself on me came and the truth that all he wanted me for was sex. I remember hearing that I was his conquest and he told everyone so.

I remember that my grandmother died a month after that ended. And the pure hatred I felt towards God. Why He took her away instead of my POS grandfather who walked out of my life 6 years before, I still never understood. She was the one grandparent who was a constant presence in my life, even though she had no obligation to stay. I remember the screaming at the top of my lungs and pounding the steering wheel, so angry and hurt and lost I had nowhere to turn, considering time after time just running my car into something and calling it quits.

I went from boy to boy to boy... Looking for something. Trying to fill the void in my body where my heart used to be. And one right after another they all broke my heart. They all wanted sex and pieces of my heart that weren't even in one solid piece to give them. I remember not feeling anything after one by one they left. I remember the betrayal as they used me as a conquest each and every time and when I wouldn't put out, they stomped me in the gutter, ashamed they couldn't get what they wanted.

I hated men. Every single one of them.

And then I remember counseling. And finally getting back on my feet. I remember feeling like for once I had a grip on my depression. I had a place to work through my problems and my frustrations, openly without fear that it would get shared with anyone else. I could express my thoughts of suicide without feeling like I would be locked up in an institution or grounded for life, or scolded for being so selfish.

I had a handle on my depression.

And then in walked my knight in shining armor. With his no fear of my demons and understanding of the void in my heart. He wanted to know me... And was in love with me after only writing letters to each other for one summer. He told me he loved me...before I was even ready to say it back.

He talked with me for hours, knowing what I was feeling before I could even put it into words. My every up and down were recorded in his mind and each time he had the perfect thing to say to heal my broken soul. He was my gift from God... And after trying to push him away, afraid that he would see my baggage and run, I finally closed the door that I left open to leave at any moment. And we sat there and he pulled out each heartache from my baggage, each piece of pain, and he quietly, lovingly, ran his hand over each piece and then hung it in his closet. He carried my burdens and took my weight. Many nights were spent in tears as he healed what I thought could never be healed.

And so when he asked me to be his wife, I was so beyond the clouds happy. I could finally share more than my heart's closet with him. I could share a home.

And then the happiest day of my life comes and it is clouded with heart wrenching goodbyes as I said goodbye to my family and my life that I had built. I was leaving my foundation behind, and I suddenly had no where to stand.

And I remember getting here and crying on our lanai for hours asking myself why I moved here, why I did this, why did I think I was strong enough...

And then sex was painful and I hated God again. And I hated my husband for not feeling my pain. And I hated myself for failing him and failing our marriage. I hated that I would do everything "right" and save myself for marriage only to be punished.

And then they started creeping up again.

All the nightmares, all the demons, all the baggage, every piece that was healed was broken again.

One thing right after another, piece by piece I was undone. Because marriage threw everything in one room and I could no longer run from anything.

And then the separation. Each and every time he went away... For every month we had we only got to spend a few weeks, sometimes only a few days together...

And each and every day I felt myself fall deeper and deeper into a hole.

And I fought like hell to get out. And some days I did. Some days I felt hope returning to my soul. And then the next wave of desperation would engulf me and I couldn't breathe again...

And this time, no one was here to pull me up to breathe. Your husband can't help you when he is under the ocean (literally).

And I realized that my life has a pattern. An up and down cycle of depression and happiness... A roller coaster.

And this roller coaster has been going down for so long that I can't remember the last time that it went up.
This darkness is so aphotic, growing darker and darker each moment, past the point where the sun can reach. This is the place where the grimmest creatures lurk in the shadows, threatening your life every moment.

At the end of this month I will have seen my husband for 15 days out of three months. 90 days of keeping the house running, and keeping the bills paid, and keeping myself together....for only 15 days of being with my husband.

And the darkness is deeper than ever. Because there is no one to pull me out. I am drowning day by day. And I have reached the end of my rope.

You see for someone who has been battling this for 9 years, the end of my rope is an alarming place to be. When I have nothing left, I am beyond the point of survival.

Because you see, some days the only thought that keeps me going and breathing is, "You can't let him come home to a dead wife. You can't let him come home to a dead wife. He will never recover. You can't let him come home to a dead wife."

And that is the point where I know, it is time for help. It is time to get on medication. It is time to take this seriously.

This is not something that I can control anymore.

You see I always felt that depression meant there was something wrong with me, something that I was screwing up or not doing right. I thought it was my fault, that I should just snap out of it.

Sometimes snapping out of it doesn't work. Some times prayer isn't enough. Some times prayer isn't enough because the voices in your head are so loud that you can't hear anything other than, "You are worthless, you can't handle this, who do you think you are, no one cares, no one would know if you were gone."

And this is the point where I am reaching out to get help. And this time it is going to be in the form of a pill.

And I am ashamed of that some times. Ashamed that my life has reached the point that I cannot cope. I am ashamed to look in the mirror, knowing the hollowness that I see there.

But some times depression is more than an emotion. Some times it is a disease.

And I have been battling it for so long, I know it is not an emotion.

I have a disease.

Not a weakness.

My depression is not a weakness.

I am not a weak person.

I am not pathetic for not being able to handle this.

It is not something that I can control.

And I am going to accept that and get help.

And maybe someday I can believe the last 7 sentences that I wrote.

And maybe someday soon I can feel this Hawaii sun and be thankful that I was brave enough and strong enough to admit that I have a problem that I cannot fix.

When your heart hurts too much...

This life is freaking hard. Literally so hard that I have no idea how I manage to make it out of bed every day. I have no idea how I manage to keep going and put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I keep going.

I think that the Navy is making my abandonment issues go into hyper drive.

"Here is your husband back, you can have him for about a week. Then you can have him for a few days here and there within the next few months. Oh yeah, we know that we took him from you for a few months before this. Sorry you have to give him up, no choice."

I get security back and then swoop, the Navy sends a submarine to take my husband away again. Thank you Navy.

This is like the military on steroids. I could honestly handle him being gone 6 months in a war zone and then home for a year and back out again. It would be much easier than this constant being in and out and then having a deployment come on top of that... Literally my husband will be home a total of three months in 14 months. And that three months is spread out in a few days here and a week here, few more days here.

IT SUCKS!!

And I still have 1400 and something days left. Yes, I am counting. I am counting the days until we are "Navy free."

Which feels very unpatriotic of me and I feel like a horrible wife for being excited for that. It is an unspoken rule in the military community that the wives just support their husband's service. That they are 100% behind them whether they reenlist or not... And I can't be that wife. And I feel like a failure for saying that.

But the feeling when my husband leaves me, is not like anything I have ever felt.

It is an ice cold iron blanket that settles in over my heart and threatens to creep up and strangle me. It is a sadness that is so dark I just stay in bed all day binge watching Netflix trying to numb it. I literally exhaust all the friends I have here because I am so lonely and I just don't want to be alone anymore.

Last weekend my sadness turned into seething rage. I was so mad I could not contain it. I was so mad at everything and everyone and I couldn't stop it. I lost my lid to my frustration and it was like a volcano.... I covered everyone in my path with scorching lava.

I couldn't get over it, I couldn't move on from it. It just sat there, angry and pushing people off cliffs.

And then this verse came to my head...

"Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved."

Total mind shift... It was like the light had been turned on.

The Lord will sustain me. I have burdens, I have a heavy heart, but the Lord will sustain me. He isn't going to let me be moved. Some versions say that you will not be shaken. Nothing will shake me if the Lord is sustaining me. I don't have to deal with these problems on my own. I can throw them at Someone who knows how to handle them.

I just get this image in my head of throwing trash and broken pieces at God and He catches them all. He then takes them and turns His back to me so I can't see while He works on them. When He turns back around, all He has in His hands to give back to me are peace and hope and strength.

So here I am, trying to throw my burdens to God, because I need Him.