I Wish You Knew

I Wish You Knew

(written a few years ago for my family) 

I wish you understood depression and how it’s affected my life.

I wish you knew what it's like to want to die. To want to die when you have beautiful kids and grandkids who you know love you, to want to die in spite of knowing that you have a blessed life. To be thankful for so many things in your life, but to have no joy in them.

I wish you did understand but to understand you’d probably have to experience it, and I’m glad you haven’t for your sake. But still, sometimes I wish you knew what it felt like to be me.

I wish you knew how the pain inside makes life so hard … and my life is not that hard when you look at it from the outside…it’s just hard being on the inside.

I wish you could understand the strength and depth of the emotions in my life.

I wish you knew how hard I’ve tried to stop feeling like this. I wish you knew the research and the people I’ve talked to, to try to make this better. I wish you knew the meds and the side effects I’ve endured to help myself.

I wish you could see how I have worked hard to put in place actual strategies to stop myself ending my life… the photo of my kids on my car visor to deter me from driving into a tree, the hundreds of hours of soaking myself in worship music and the friends I have who I know will ask me honestly about how suicidal I am.

I wish you knew the deepness of the pain this depression causes, the physical-ness of the pain.

I wish you could understand how hard it has been at times to pull myself out of bed and to just function at a basic level.

I wish you knew that when you wonder about me and why I haven’t reached my full potential - why I haven’t really made much of my life, when I have so much ability - that I too am aware of this … that I see others doing and achieving things that I want and know I could do if I didn’t have to spend all my energy fighting the depression … and that sometimes when things are good I feel like I still can…until it hits again.

I wish you knew how hard it is for me sometimes just to LIVE, to do small talk, to look ‘normal’, to enjoy things. I wish you understood that when you see me I am usually putting in a huge effort to appear ‘normal’; that when you look at me, what you see is not really ‘me’…inside I’m in pain and sometimes just holding on…though you wouldn’t know it.

I wish you could understand that sometimes I have good days, yes even good months, but it always comes back. And those good times probably makes it harder for you to understand me…you see me doing things and you don’t understand why sometimes I can and other times I can’t.

I wish you knew the relief I felt when I swallowed those tablets, how I knew that it would be over, the pain was going to stop, that I would be with my Lord and that my family would be free from the burden that I am.

I wish you knew how I now work hard to fight the desire to end it all. How those thoughts come unbidden and when I am weak they seem to speak truth.

I wish you knew how much I wanted and tried to be close to you but felt so judged.

I wish you knew what its like to have your brain, your mind, your thinking, just stop working; to look at something and not be able to process thoughts about what it is and what to do. 

I wish you knew how tough it is to look at your child and to know you love them, but to feel nothing. And how sad that in itself makes you feel.

I wish you could understand how someone can be a devoted Christian with a deep love for their Father God, and still struggle with life; that a Christian can experience deep hopelessness while still having a strong faith.

I wish you understood that for a person with depression the ‘joy and hope’ of being a Christian is found in the knowledge that one day they will be with Him, and that being a Christian means you lose your fear of dying and that in fact it becomes even more desirable because you know that to be with Him is to be free from the pain and sorrow of the depression.

I wish you knew and could understand these things, but I’m kind of glad for your sake that you don’t, that you won't ever experience the depths of this depression….so I wish you knew these things but I’m glad you don’t.

I wrote this a few years ago when things were tough, when severe and chronic depression had been a part of my life for 9 years. I do not experience the depths of depression like this now, and haven't for 3 years. Yes sometimes it comes back when life gets hard, but it doesn't stay with me (I will write about my healing in another post). 

I've posted the above writing for 2 reasons: Firstly, to help people who haven't experienced anything like this to understand how it feels and how it can take over a life and debilitate a person. Secondly to show that even in a depression this bad and which may go on for many years, it can change. It can leave, with God there is hope where there is no hope.

If you feel like this or know someone who does, please write to me. I would love to hear from you...