Hiding Our Humanity

Today I read two posts that connected with my past on a deep level. One was an article talking about trigger warnings in classrooms and how there is a trend towards keeping places safe and free from emotionally fraught material. The other post was a blog written by one of my new favorite authors about her experience speaking at her alma mater.

When I remember my time in college, I have to fight to see the good parts. Because there were good parts. There were friendships and wonderful professors and late night giggles and getting yelled at too many times to count for being too loud during quiet hours. There were fall retreats and Battle of the Floors and singing in choir and loving the city I lived in even though it also scared and intimidated me. But mostly I remember how hellish my final time there was. I remember the crippling depression, the eating disorder, the alcohol abuse, the self-injury, the hospitalizations (yes, plural) because I didn't know if I had the strength to keep living. I remember falling HARD and feeling like there was no one to help.

College was where I first got real help. I had a counselor who made me feel less alone, like my problems weren't who I was, just things I was dealing with. So I will forever be grateful for the help I DID receive, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that help saved my life. But college was also the place where I learned that my problems were too much, too big. I learned that Christian institutions want shiny, happy, healthy students that they can show off to benefactors, alumni, and potential students. They don't want messy imperfection in their walls. I remember living in fear of being honest with how bad things were because I was afraid of being kicked out, afraid of being rejected. Well, that did happen to me, and it was every bit as horrifying as I had feared.

I am super passionate about people feeling supported when they are down. I have been in the black pit of depression too many times, and I live in a constant state of alert waiting for the next cycle of despair to rear up and try to drag me under. I know how isolating it feels when your friends and family seem happy and healthy and you feel alienated from them in every way. I know how HARD it is to have faith when you can't feel love or joy or peace or hope and everyone who tries to make you feel better feels gratingly fake. So when a friend comes to me and wants to talk about how they're REALLY feeling, I do my very best to be a good listener. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning and someone asked if they can use my floatation device, too, but I try to listen anyway because I know they might not find another person to help them float a little until it's too late.

Why don't we talk more about how hard it is to be human? Why don't we talk more about how painful it is to be alive? I'm not saying there aren't AMAZING things about life, but I'm so tired of hearing how amazing things are when they most certainly are NOT in my life. It has been 8 years since I had the courage to go to the counselor's office at my college and say that I didn't know why, but my life was hard and I needed help or I wasn't going to make it. Sometimes I wonder how different my life might be if I had known how to ask for help sooner. Part of the problem was that none of the people around me had any understanding of mental illness. Pretty much my first year of counseling was learning what depression was and how to identify what I was feeling. Because I didn't know how to sit with my emotions long enough to identify them and their roots. All I knew was that I was supposed to be happy, but I wasn't.

I want a culture where we don't hide when life is hard. I want an environment when pastors and church leaders can publicly talk about the hard parts of their lives as they live through them, not once it's all over and resolved. I want people to feel safe talking about their pain so we can learn to empathize and understand each other. The more we understand each other, the better we can love each other. We have to stop crucifying people for failing, because THAT'S WHAT HUMANS DO. We fail. But we learn from our failures, and that's how we grow and mature.

Tomorrow will mark 5 months since my dad died. The first month after the funeral, I was more angry at the lack of support from the people around me than I was sad about my dad being gone. Part of that was because anger is easier to deal with than pain and sadness, but part of it was because I was so furious that even after years and years of trying to build a support system for just such an event, it failed spectacularly. I was furious at every person who tried to high five me and be cheerful in my direction. There was NO room in the culture around me for me to mourn openly. I felt anguish and guilt at how poorly I had supported my three friends who lost parents just months before I lost my dad. Being on the other side, I had so much more insight about how to be a good friend in times of tragedy. If I couldn't figure out how to find a safe place to express my true feelings for a loss that people universally recognize is devastating, how am I supposed to create a safe place for people who have hidden, little understood hurts? Why are we so afraid to drop the smile and cry when we are hurting? I know it's hard. My therapist and I have been working closely together for six and a half years, and I think I've only cried twice in front of him.

I don't have answers. I know it's hard. But if we all made an effort to reach out just a little, I think it would add up to a lot. If we all just texted one or two people each week to say, "Hey, thinking of you. How are you doing today?" I think maybe we would feel less alone and a little safer to share our true selves. I think we wouldn't be so afraid to share the complex parts of our humanity because we would understand that we belong to each other and together we can do hard things (to borrow two sayings from one of my favorite authors Glennon Doyle Melton). Sometimes when I need support the most, I offer support to a friend, and then we discover that we can support each other and make it through.

Inundated with Depression

I have spent pretty much all of today immersed in depression. I felt it in my heart, my head, read it with my eyes, listened to a talk about depression, cried tears related to depression, craved (and ate) sugar because of depression. It's been rolling over and through me in wave after wave.

I felt raw all day. Last night I cried and stayed up too late trying to sort out how I felt. Today I read blog after blog about depression. When a beloved actor commits suicide, people share all their thoughts about mental illness, even the ones that are ignorant and hurtful. People who should have just listened spoke and caused harm instead of healing.

I've been listening to Jason Gray's latest album for the last few days. He doesn't really have a unique sound. He fits right in with the typical Christian pop music melody-wise. It's his lyrics that make him stand out from the crowd. His songs are the most honest songs I've ever heard.



I keep holding on to the lyrics from the end of this song: "You don't even have to speak/Just sit with me in the ashes here/And together we can pray for peace/To the one acquainted with our grief." It's just the worst when I risk being vulnerable, take off my mask, and let someone know how I've really been doing, how much depression has really been hurting me, and they try to fix it or they brush it off. Sometimes more than anything I just want a friend to bring me some ice cream and sit with me while we watch a couple episodes of Friends. I just want someone to be there, to sit with me in the pain, to walk beside me as I try to make it long enough for it to get better.

I've been feeling incredibly lonely over the past few months. I've been fighting depression mostly by myself. I've had long-distance support from my best friend who lives on the West Coast, and of course my therapist helps. But I'm still left alone most of the time. I was thinking tonight that fighting depression is like training for sports competition. I should disclose that my only experience with playing sports outside of gym class in high school was when I played flag football in college, so the analogy probably isn't perfect. But it's fourth and goal and I'm going for it (I'm so full of sports knowledge!).

I spend all day every day training (fighting depression). I know that I need help to know how to train better, more efficiently, so I hired a coach (counselor/therapist). He gives advice, educates, cheers me on. It's a special kind of relationship, but it's professional. I need more help than just one person can give me, more support, so I've sought out some teammates, as it were (other people who are walking their own journey of mental health). I've attended a depression support group a few times, and it is so encouraging to know I'm not the only one going through this. So now I feel like there are other people on the field who are working towards the same goal I am, and if we help each other we can all get closer to the goal (making it through each day, getting to a place where we feel more in control of our mental illness). What's missing are fans (friends). Fans just show up and cheer on the athletes. They're supportive even though they can't hop on the field and play the game for me. This is a game where critics are not welcome, but fans are deeply appreciated. I keep looking up at the stands hoping for someone to smile and wave at me, cheering me on, but the stands are empty. My family loves me, and I love them dearly, but they don't live near me. It's like they're watching on TV; they're cheering me on, but it's not the same as watching the game live. The thing about fans that is so great is that they're there only if they want to be. I pay my coach. He's totally on my team, helping me, cheering me on, but it's different. I want people to choose to root for me just because they care about me and believe in me. People who are actively in my life because they live here and they like me.

So all these thoughts and feelings have been rolling around in my head. I'm trying to sort out my faith in the midst of feeling like church is harming more than helping. I started trying to connect with God in different ways and discovered that I love going to mass at the catholic cathedral a mile from my apartment. It brings peace to my soul. It feels a little weird to share all this, to talk about how much depression hurts, to talk about how I'm trying new things which is scary but helpful. Tonight I was at a talk on depression, and after the speaker shared his own story of dealing with depression and anxiety, he shared some scripture. He talked about how the Bible is testimony, and there is tension between the testimonies it contains. The primary testimony is how God relates to the people with whom he chooses to be in relationship, how he sees them, rescues them, loves them. And there are testimonies that are in direct opposition to that primary testimony, people who acknowledge how God has shown up for their ancestors, but they also cry out asking why God has forsaken them. Thinking about how the Bible is a collection of people sharing how they have or haven't encountered God made me want to testify the truth of my life right now. I felt compelled to share more about what depression is like for me, what trying to find God and faith in the midst of the pain is like. For years now I've hoped that somehow my experiences, my story, my testimony could somehow help someone else. They can't do that if I keep everything to myself and hide behind a mask of "I'm fine," so for now this blog feels like a safe way to experiment with sharing.

Rubber Ducks and Anchors

I was thinking about my rubber duck today and had an epiphany.

One of my greatest flaws is my tendency to get swept away by my emotions. I don't mean that in some sort of romantic, happy way. I get swept away in a way that makes it seem like when I feel something, that feeling trumps everything else. When I feel alone, that feeling tends to trump the truth that God is always with me. When I feel worthless, it trumps the truth that Jesus paid the highest price for my salvation.

I have been working hard to improve in this area, and I think especially in the last few months I've started to see some maturity there. I'd describe my life in 2014 as spiritually turbulent. I've been asking really hard questions and finding no satisfactory answer. I've been reading scripture that I can't make sense of and that makes me feel angry and sad. I've cried during sermons and stood silent during worship, unable to utter words that I don't know if I mean. And through all this I've been faithfully praying and reading my Bible, serving in church regularly, having deep conversations with friends, pushing through this chaotic storm just trying to hang on until the waters calm.

This brings me to the rubber duck. A few years ago a friend of mine was being supportive through a similar time of spiritual turbulence. She encouraged me to just keep floating on the water and ride out the storm. She then spent the next week or two looking for just the right rubber ducks before she gifted me one duck with a pirate hat, eye patch, and striped shirt and one duck that was blue so I would have a tangible reminder to ride out the storm.

So I was gazing at my pirate duck (the one I keep on my work desk) and thinking about storms and water when the lyrics "and this hope is an anchor for my soul" floated through my mind. When I think of anchors, I tend to think of sinking and drowning, but today I was thinking about how they are stabilizing. When you're in a storm, you want to stay afloat, but you also don't want to find out that you've blown off course when the waters finally calm and you can see where you are. An anchor keeps you where you need to be regardless of what the water is trying to do.

Somehow this idea of an anchor gave me a new perspective on hope. For a long time I've sort of resented the idea of hope because I had several years where my life was very dark and hope seemed nowhere to be found. Hope seemed so emotionally unstable, so fickle. Now I think maybe hope is more like something that's there subconsciously, waiting for the storm to die down so you can see it was there all along. Remember the story of when Jesus and the disciples were on the water and a storm came up? Jesus was sleeping. The disciples were freaking out. I want to be more like Jesus, calm in the midst of my emotional storms, instead of like the disciples, sure I'm going to die. The great thing is, though, that whether or not I'm able to keep my cool, the anchor is there. My faith is there, anchoring me. Faith is bigger than just how I feel on any given day towards God. It's something that tethers my identity to something bigger than my circumstances. I don't need the right answers, I don't have to try to be a better person or earn more righteousness. I just have to cling to the hope of my anchor to keep me where I need to be so I can emerge from the storm victorious.

It's hard to put into words exactly how I'm feeling right now, but I think the best way to sum this whole post up is to say that this: my whole life it's seemed like there's a disconnect between my head and my heart. I always had all the "right" answers intellectually, but I couldn't make my feelings match what I knew in my head. Somehow this revelation of hope being an anchor has bridged the gap, at least a little. I feel such a confident peace that I will be OK, even knowing that there will still be times I will cry myself to sleep out of fear or despair or feeling utterly alone. I will make it through the storm and keep sailing forward because I am anchored to Jesus. What a beautiful revelation to ponder during Holy Week.

Envy and Worth

Sometimes when a friend is doing something amazing, I feel genuinely excited for them. I cheer them on, send encouraging notes, and try to be a good friend all around. But sometimes, something good happens to someone I know, and it happens. I feel it creep up on me, sinking its ugly teeth deep into my soul. Envy worms its way into my heart.

Envy is not about wanting what other people have. It's about believing deep down that because someone else has something that you do not, you are less valuable. For me, envy says that because she is married and I am single, I am worth less. Because he is more respected than I am, I am worth less. Because she is prettier than I am, because she can act better than I can, she is more valuable than I am.

That is NOT how God sees things. Jesus told a story of a lost sheep where a shepherd left the 99 he had to go look for the missing one, and when he found it he rejoiced. Jesus told a story of a father and his two sons, and when one son screwed up big time and the other had a bad attitude, the father loved them both. He did not rebuke his sons but declared his love in a way that showed there was nothing they could do to make him love them less.

Yesterday I texted a friend some thoughts about how great it is that God does not have a finite number of blessings. This friend and I have both been in similar areas of need, and I thought about how great it is that she doesn't have to worry that the fact that God provided a computer for me does not negate his ability to provide a computer for her. God isn't up in heaven crunching the numbers and feeling bad because he already used up his computer blessing quota. He is not picking and choosing blessings giving only to the perfect favorites.

My thoughts are a little scattered, but I feel a need to remind myself (and maybe you) that "Beloved" is not a title we can lose. It is not a name God hands out on a whim and takes it back when we are bad. We are each God's favorite, we are each worth so much to Him that he sacrificed His son for us. I don't pretend to really understand that or even believe it very well, but it bears repeating: God rejoices over us even when we're slinking back to Him ashamed of where we've been. He will not give up on us, he will not neglect us. God loves us more than we can comprehend.

Who I Am

Last night was the first meeting of the summer book group in which I am participating. We're reading "Girls with Swords," by Lisa Bevere. We've only hit up the first chapter, but its about choosing who you will be. Will you be a hero in your story, in other people's stories? I'm pretty excited about it, and we had a great group of women there.

Today I finally remembered to look up a music video that a friend told me about weeks ago. I'm already on the 3rd 4th 5th listen through, and I wanted to share it.



This is a constant struggle for me, to discern if the things that have been said to me are truth or lies. It's especially hard when some of the most awful things people have said or done to me are by people I was supposed to be able to trust, people who were supposed to be looking out for me. I am trying to embrace the truth that I am a daughter of the most high King, that I am loved, wanted, cherished. In a world where people grow, change, and move in and out of seasons of life, it can be really hard for me to accept that God does not change. He does not love me more or less based on how I act. He doesn't get tired of me and move on, or get married and have no time for me anymore.

This is where it gets hard for me: I FEEL like God doesn't love me, or none of my friends care about me. It can be really hard for me to acknowledge that my feelings do not determine how others feel. That's why I still have birthday cards up on my VCR. They (and the kind words inside) are tangible reminders of the friends I have, things that I can't deny. And when I focus on those, my feelings start to change, to line up with the truth that I have amazing friends who love me.

That's why I started trying to memorize the book of Ephesians earlier this year. Sadly, I dropped the ball, but I intend to pick it back up and keep going. Meditating verse by verse, even sentence by sentence, helps the truth of God's love to sink in deep down. As a wise friend pointed out to me yesterday, sometimes what I really need is to take my problems and hurts to God first. It's ridiculous how easy it is for me to forget how healing being in His presence can be.

I am a beloved daughter of Christ. I have been purchased at a high price. I am God's masterpiece. I am a warrior. I left normal behind and am now covered in righteousness.

Depression

Last week I read this article and sent myself an email reminder to write a blog about depression. So of course I forgot. And then today I was thinking about what I want next week to look like, what I want January to look like, and I started thinking about how I want to interact with my friends right now in light of the depression that's creeping in.

I was diagnosed with major depression in college. It was probably two years of feeling like life was not worth living, of feeling like there was no hope. Getting better and feeling more normal was a long, gradual process. As I look at the past two years, I can see a pattern emerging. Spring turns into summer and I'm enjoying life. I'm involved in activities, I'm seeing my friends on a regular basis, and things are good. Fall rolls around, and I love the cooler weather, the beautiful foliage, the golden sunlight. Once winter starts to set in, though, especially around the time we set our clocks back, I start to love life a little less. It's gradual and in dribs and drabs, but a bad day here and there becomes a bad week, and then I seem to have a bad month or so before spring hits.*

Everyone has good days and bad days. That roller coaster of emotion is just part of being human. When depression starts to set in, it's different. Where once I would wake up in the morning feeling emotionally recharged after a bad day, depression keeps the negative emotions rolling from one day to the next. I don't bounce back very quickly from emotionally difficult or draining situations. I have a much harder time joking with friends, having light conversation. Everything feels heavier. I will probably enjoy myself at events and when I'm with my friends, but often the happiness is gone by the time I reach my car. I feel like crying a lot more for no reason, and even though I can usually hold it in I'll get choked up more frequently. Sometimes my car is the only place I can let it out.

One of the biggest ways depression affects me is how it hits my faith. I constantly wrestle with my faith, whether I am in a season of health or a season of depression. I question, I doubt, I get angry, I long for neat and tidy answers that I can understand. When I am depressed, the joy goes out of my faith. I go through the motions because I know I can't base my faith entirely on my emotions.** I show up at church, I volunteer, I try to still be there for others. Leading is doable but difficult. I walk a very fine line between faking it and being genuine but not negative. It is hard. One thing I have said before is that I cannot hope for myself when it feels like this. I have to rely on my friends to hope and believe for me. That being said, here are things that are helpful for me when depression is dragging me down:***

1. Don't constantly quote scripture or talk about how everything will get better. Some people will disagree, but I find it insincere and grating. I don't need a friend to pull me out of my depression. I need a friend to walk through it with me. For me, that means letting me talk when I need to or not talking at all. I will be less likely to open up if I feel like I'm going to be brushed aside and fed a cliche (no matter how true the cliche may be).

2. Ask how I'm doing (but only if you really want to know). I hate trying to figure out how to be pleasant around people when I'm not doing well. People constantly ask, "How's it going?" but don't want to know if the answer isn't, "Good." I have yet to find a good way to answer vaguely that things could be better without making the entire conversation awkward, and I just hate being insincere and saying everything's fine when it's actually the opposite.

3. Pray for me, but not necessarily with me. I know that prayer is helpful, even when it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes all prayer is to me is knowing that my friends think I'm important enough to bring me up to God. I've found that when I'm feeling really depressed, it is hard and sometimes even painful to hear people speak hope over me. It really depends on the day and setting.

4. Spend time with me doing little things. I'm never one for huge events. It's just not my style. When I'm depressed, my desire to withdraw and become a hermit increases exponentially. A few weeks ago I spend an afternoon with a friend doing nothing. We watched movies, ate snacks, talked, and we made wearing sweatpants a requirement. That is the kind of thing that recharges me. I love going to dinner or coffee one on one, or just watching TV and doing nothing. Low-key things are best, especially since depressions saps my energy even lower than normal.

I don't often talk details about depression. We don't talk much about how we feel in my family, and when it comes to my friends I don't want to be the person who is always dragging things down and becoming a burden. It's tough to find a balance of leaning on friends but not pulling them under. I know that depression comes and goes, and it's just going to be part of my life. I hope that people continue to become educated about mental illness so that there won't be a stigma about it. So many people think they know what it's like and they just don't. If we could just love each other and accept that people need to get help in different ways, that would be a huge step forward.****

*It's so obvious as I write this that I probably have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). My therapist has been encouraging me for the last few winters to invest in a lightbox. Might be time to start saving up. Also, my cousin Rachel typically footnotes her blogs, and I realized that since I tend to be a lengthy aside person, I should totally do it, too.

**I hear repeatedly that faith cannot be based on emotion. I don't entirely agree. I think our emotions are tied to our belief, and if our emotions are constantly being dragged down, it can be really hard to believe things that are opposite of how you feel. I don't think there's any simple answer for how to deal with "desert" times.

***Everyone is different. With all the different personality types and different stages of life, of course depression will look very different for people. This is based on me, personally.

****Some people need medication to feel better. Some people need extensive therapy. No two people are going to respond to treatment the same way, so it's important not to pressure people away from help they need. I've been in regular counseling since late 2007, and it's helped tremendously. I've tried a bunch of different medications, and while none of them worked for me, I know people who felt better just weeks after starting meds.

Fear vs. Love

I struggle to love people. Let me clarify: I struggle to love people who are different from me. I struggle to love people who I perceive are more holy, prettier, more accepting, or just all around better than me. I struggle to love people who I perceive are less holy, less smart, less considerate, or less well off financially than I am. Sometimes, when I allow myself to acknowledge these flaws, I really hate myself. Because I know that's wrong.

Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. And I think the problem I have adhering to that idea is that I don't love myself very much, so I feel like I have to fight to be loved. I judge myself very harshly, so I tend to judge others pretty harshly as well. That also means I constantly assume I am the recipient of other's judgment. I worry that they're judging how I look, what I eat, if I'm funny, if I'm attractive. I worry that they talk about me behind my back, that they secretly only tolerate me. That last one is less of a concern now, but that was one of my biggest fears in high school.

In high school I was part of the Drama Club group, but I always felt like I was on the outer edge. I had two amazing friends with whom I felt I could be myself, but when I was around the rest of the group I felt like I had to be perfect. That was largely due to the fact that I heard how vicious they were about some other people, and I feared that any show of how I really felt would result in being ostracized.

In junior high I was still homeschooled, but I experienced a similar thing at youth group. I remember one girl in particular that everyone made fun of. She was never really accepted. And it's not that she ever did anything; people just didn't like her. I was always super uncomfortable with how people treated her, but I was terrified of being rejected by the only friends I had, so I just kept quiet. There have been times when, as an adult, I think of that girl and wonder what happened to her. I wonder how her life has been. I weep for the mistakes I've made, for how awful she must have felt, and I pray that God shows her some amazing love.

All of this is to say that fear is very powerful. Fear has kept me quiet when I should have spoken up. Fear has kept me from telling people the truth about what's going on in my life. Fear keeps me trying to push certain people down so I can feel superior. Fear keeps me desperately trying to be deserving of God's love. When I hear how someone has made a mistake in their life, I'm relieved that the spotlight is off of me, and I feel superior that I'm doing better. Because if I'm better, I'm more deserving of love. I sense that there is an attitude of, "If I can reject that group/person first by making them feel inferior, then they can't reject me and make me feel inferior." I grieve for the people who live life constantly on the defense.

The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. When you love someone, when you understand then, it's harder to be afraid of them. There are a few patients at work that I was wary of at first because they are different, but now that I've interacted with them a few times, I find them interesting, and I enjoy when they come in.

I hope that I can learn to love instead of being afraid. I hope that I can learn to appreciate who I am and in turn appreciate the uniqueness of others. I hope that I can learn to speak up for myself or others without fear of the consequences. I hope that I can start to live the faith I've claimed since I was a child. I still think there is right and there is wrong, but instead of using that as a weapon against others, I want to extend love and kindness. I want others to be loved whether or not I think their actions are right.

Fear has dictated so much of my life. I read recently that man's greatest fear is that God will abandon him, even though throughout history God's people were the one to abandon God. That's my greatest fear. I hope that as I continue to spend time with friends who love me, who encourage me, that I will begin to release fear and embrace love. Maybe it doesn't matter if God loves me if I won't accept that and choose not to fear. I'm not sure how to do that, but I'm working on it. Being a part of such a wonderful church community has certainly helped. I have never had anyone reject me when I've shared part of my story. I still tend to hold part of myself back out of fear, but I truly believe in the heart of my church.

Loss

In the past few weeks, three people that I know have passed away. So I've been thinking a lot about death and loss and relationships. I admit that I haven't lost anyone that I saw regularly, so the losses in my life, while painful, have been easier for me to deal with. I haven't lost a parent or a best friend unexpectedly. And while I'm afraid it might sound callous, it's been easier for me to deal with the deaths of people I didn't see as often. It's easier to hold on to the good memories rather than constantly feel the loss of future memories. Sure, I miss people more when I'm at weddings and I know this would have been a big event, but the day to day life is easier to bear.

I've also been thinking about relationships that are lost for other reasons. Those have been much harder for me to deal with in my life. For example, I was very close to someone in college. Our relationship was probably too close, in truth. Our emotional lives kind of meshed together in a way that was kind of messy and not always good for us. But it ended up blowing up, kind of all of a sudden. I was very caught off guard by how things turned out, and I just couldn't process and adapt fast enough to accept changes that happened in my friend's life. I still feel a lot of grief over how our friendship ended. I feel bad for my part of not being able to sustain the friendship. Yeah, I'd be amenable to see if we could still be friends, but unfortunately, with the way things ended, I don't know how I'd even begin to approach this person. So much has happened, so much has changed. I do wish I could apologize, because I know there was a time in my life when I was a terrible friend to everyone around me. I was incredibly selfish, and even though I was going through a rough time, that was not an excuse for how I treated the people around me.

Another example is that I had a relationship that ended abruptly when I left school. It was a more professional, working relationship, but it was with a person I respected. Because of the suddenness of my departure from college,  there were things that happened that still feel unfinished. I did not get closure on some pretty significant things, and I still struggle with my feelings about certain people, certain events.

As I think about the different loss and pain I've felt throughout my life, I think there is something so healing about finality. When someone dies, it's terrible and it hurts, but it's final. As time goes by, you learn to adapt and keep living your life. When you lose other relationships, whether with a friend, colleague, or (I'm assuming) a significant other, I think it's harder. It doesn't always feel final. I wonder if I should do something to mend the relationship, or if it's time to let it be. I wonder how the other person is doing, what's going on in their life. I wonder if they ever think of me, because I do think of them. I miss the good times. I'm sad for the ugly things that happened. I agonize because they are still out there living their lives, and I am living my life, and they are no longer connected.

Maybe it's more a question of forgiveness and letting go. When someone has passed away, you know there is no more chance for reconciliation or an apology. You kind of just have to let go. It's far easier (for me, anyway) to hold on to pain from someone still out there. Maybe someday, someone who hurt me will realize it, seek me out, and apologize. But that's not likely. I know I need to learn to forgive and let go even if I never get closure or an apology.

I know my thoughts aren't quite cohesive in this post, but I don't care. I start so many blog posts that I never get back to editing, so I'm trying to just write something and let it be, whether it's "perfect" or not.

Two Questions

Do you see me? Do you like what you see?

Someone told me today that those are two questions we keep asking people throughout our lives. I definitely agree. From the kid who constantly yells, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" to the teenager trying on outfits who asks, "How do I look?" to the employee who works really hard on a presentation that the boss will see.

We want to matter. We want people to like us, to treat us as if we have worth. We want people to appreciate who we are.

Feeling invisible is a pretty awful thing. Just as awful is having people notice you, but only because they have negative things to say about you. That's why the silent treatment and getting bullied feel awful. It's terrible to not have people care how you're feeling. "How's it going?" has become just another way to say "Hello." That really bothers me. So much so that I make a concentrated effort not to use that phrase unless I want a real answer and am prepared to really listen. There have been numerous times in my life when I was feeling horrible inside, and as people passed me by, my answer was always, "I'm fine" because I knew they didn't want a real answer.

Let's try to pay some attention to the people around us. Practice your listening skills. Or maybe it's your turn to be heard. Open up to someone you trust about how you're really doing. Find someone who sees you, who appreciates who you are and loves you for it. I read today that we don't love people for how we feel about them; we love them for how they make us feel about ourselves. I love to be around people who tell me I'm worth something, who show it by their actions. I think if we all tried to be more aware of the people around us and how they're feeling, there would be fewer people hurting in our homes, in the church, in our schools, in the world.