When I was thinking about restarting this blog, I originally wanted it to be mostly focused on depression. The things I had experienced, learned, fought through, suffered through, etc. And depression and my journey with depression will likely be a central theme, but the main thing I want to write about is the journey out of depression.
For too long I’ve let my depression define me. Honestly, it was a relief to finally have a word for what I’d been dealing with. I thought the depression came on as a result of my IUD, but what I’ve learned, much to my shock, was that I’ve actually been depressed for basically my whole life. I never knew, never even fathomed in my wildest imagination, that children can be clinically depressed. The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve come to know that it not only is a thing, but is not uncommon.
If I were to give a general overview of my life, this is what it would be:
I moved to a small Californian beach town at just weeks old. My parents divorced when I was 6 years old. The story with my dad went like this: he met a new lady, and she became a pillar in my life, a second mom. They are still together to this day.
The story with my mom went like this: she had a few relationships and ultimately ended up marrying a man who lived on a farm, and we spent a lot of time outdoors and in nature.
I grew up, moved to Los Angeles. Moved home. Met a guy, got married, then divorced. I partied a little too hard. I went to YWAM, my life was changed. I came home, met a new guy, and got married. Here I am today. Not too bad, right?
But really, in the time from 6 years old until senior year of high school, I lived in too many houses to count (as of today I’m at around house number 33 or so). I never saw my mother in a healthy relationship. My father (the “fun” parent) couldn’t hold a job for very long. He eventually just disappeared out of mine and my brother’s lives. We literally had conversations about how our dad could be dead and we would never know.
My mother’s new husband was never referred to as my stepdad or stepfather, always as my mom’s husband. He was misogynistic. He was a cheater. He was rude, racist, prejudiced. He was pure evil in my eyes. And to top it off, he was a pastor. Yes, this man was conniving and controlling, he was the scum of the earth. He was verbally and mentally abusive towards me. Plus. his face is just ugly to look at.
After several failed attempts to move out of his house and leave him, my mom finally did it my freshman year of high school. Our financial situation went from bad to worse, but I never remember a time being so happy as the first night in our new apartment. We went grocery shopping at midnight, picked out junk food and other essentials, and made a crappy apartment our home. It’s funny looking back that I was never embarrassed of our new home, and I was embarrassed about everything growing up. Eventually, like all the times before, she went back to him.
All this to say, I never had an adult relationship I could look up to, and never had any type of appropriate relationship with an older man. Still to this day, middle aged men make me wary.
When we finally moved out for good, my experience with men had been nothing good, so I of course had no good relationships. I did not know how to be treated by a man, I did not know what made a good relationship. I did not know how to talk about my feelings or express myself. So I chose crap guys to date. I made some really bad choices that I still regret to this day. I truly believed I was never meant for marriage or a relationship (not to mention the fact that nobody every talked to be about being in a relationship. I was embarrassed to even talk about boys with my mom!). Eventually, after years of horrible self talk and believing awful things about myself, I met a guy who, for some reason, wanted to marry me. So I married him. I knew it was wrong. I knew I wasn’t happy. But I honest to God believed I would never find anyone else again.
Well, our relationship sucked, he made me into a person I didn’t like, and created wounds that have healed but are easily opened again. So we divorced. I went into party mode to “make up for the time I had lost being married to that idiot”. I made even worse decisions. I was in my mid-twenties still trying to be the person that other people approved of. I never gave thought to who I actually was or wasn’t, what I believed and what was important to me.
On the brink of total destruction, I ran back to Jesus. It was a miracle. A true miracle. The night it happened, I felt like I was floating because all of the weight I had been carrying for 20+ years had been lifted. It was an experience that I still don’t totally understand, other than knowing that it was God. I left for YWAM shortly after. The way the pieces fell into place can only be explained in that it was the plan all along.
During my time in YWAM, I gave up ever being married again to God. I knew I had majorly sinned by marrying and divorcing (did I mention that my mother has been married 6 times?) and 100% accepted that if I had messed up my chance of being married, I accepted it. When I returned, I re-met my now husband. We are FAR from perfect, but he is truly the love of my life and I don’t know what I would do without him.
My life experiences, along with the millions of other parts of my life I didn’t include, are what lead me to where I am now. A mostly unhappy girl, who struggles immensely with deep, deep depression. My brain never even had the chance to form right. I was exposed to trauma from very early on, and the trauma never stopped. I want to be mad at my mother, mostly, for all of these things, but I’m not. I know she only did what she thought was best, but it wasn’t best. What would have been best would have been to stay with my father. Maybe not best for them, but best for my brother and I. I’m in my thirties now, and feel so messed up.
I live a pretty normal life on the outside, but inside, is a major hole. A black hole called depression. It’s not easy to describe to a person who has never dealt with depression, but my goal is to do my best.
Linsey 