My Pet Monster

This is going to definitely be a very personal and story-oriented post about my earlier life and my current struggles with depression and self-hate. If you’re not into story-time, skip to the end where I will explain the truth God has shown me that may help you or a loved-one deal with the same things.

*trigger warnings to those sensitive to the subjects of self-harm, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts*

So, depression, it’s an ugly and disappointing word. It’s what none of us think of being when we’re little, and what we all try to hide from the people we love, especially our kids. It’s when we’re torn between, “maybe if they saw my struggles they’d also see some strength that could help them later,” and, “I can’t let them know what I am. They deserve so much better.”

It’s a list of things you should have been but you’re not. “What do you mean you're depressed?” “There’s nothing wrong with you or your life.” “But you’re a Christian.” “It’s about joy, not happiness!”

But, I do know how to be happy. It’s outlined pretty clearly for us, and that adds to all the guilt when I can’t get there.

What I’ve come to realize, after years of various counseling sessions and medications, is that I don’t think my form of depression is rooted in a physiological imbalance of serotonin and dopamine. I can tell you exactly where it started and when it’s at its strongest. It started when I began to hate myself.

I was in the fifth grade when I stopped thinking of friendships as a thing that happens between two people who like each other’s company, and friendship turned into the people you are safe around—the ones who don’t dedicate their days to making you feel worthless. And then, a year later, it morphed again into something to be pursued with those who can stop others from trying to make you feel worthless.

And for myself, I believed I was worthless. I believed I had nothing to offer. I thought I was ugly. I thought I was annoying. I thought I was a waste of oxygen for everyone else. And those thoughts took root and took hold and never ever let go.

Here’s the deal with lies: when we believe them, we give them power. We take authority away from God to tell us who and what we are, and we hand that authority over to the lie, or the liar, as is often the case.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, or maybe long even before that, I stopped believing “I am your workmanship, and your works are wonderful,” and started to believe God had made me wonderful, but something I had done or said made me no longer his, no longer wanted, and I began to make lists of goals and perfection to be sought.

Ironically, believing that I was no longer “good enough” was the only thing at the time that pulled me out of alignment with God’s truth. I could have gone to him back then and asked, “So, I’m really weird, people tell me I’m a freak, and that I shouldn’t exist. Is that true?” And he would have told me, “You are my workmanship, and my works are wonderful.” I could have seen what made me quirky as something valuable, and then I wouldn’t be writing this.

When I stopped believing I was God’s workmanship, I also stopped believing that he loved me. 

Everything that went wrong in my life was no longer a struggle we could handle together, but became a punishment. “They hate me because God does, because I am unworthy and damaged and irredeemable. SO. BE. IT.” Or at least that’s how I wanted to think. But we weren’t made to think that way. We were not made to accept lies, so I fought them with more lies. Oh, how I wanted to not care what God or any person thought. But I did, and so I hated myself even more.

An odd and vicious cycle began to take hold. My coping mechanisms for hating myself were also my desperate tie to the hope that someone would come out of the woodwork and say, “Stop! You are worthy!” And that didn’t happen, or if it did, I was too lost to listen.

So I started to cut, and otherwise injure, myself. I stopped eating more than 600 calories a day, and punished myself for eating too much with cutting or doing sit-ups until I thought I would tear in half.

Then cutting and being hungry would make me high, and it felt much better than the numbness I had adopted.

Then, while high, I would think, “Maybe someone will see. Maybe they will help me.”

And then the high would wear off and I would think “How stupid and petty and selfish of me to want someone to help me, to notice. I’m not worth of anyone’s time.”

So I would cut and not eat lunch the next day, because I hated myself, and I was in a kind of pain that I didn’t know how to otherwise express.

Not eating properly was my way of trying to reach perfection. Cutting worked two functions. It was my way of expressing and releasing my anxiety and hopelessness, and also it was how I would punish myself for not being perfect. Sometimes I would cut to feel better and, a few minutes later, cut to punish myself for thinking I deserved to feel better.

Around other people, my childhood confidence turned to crippling doubt. Doubt turned to fear, and fear turned to isolation. I started to relish endless hours in my room, or better, my closet. In the silence, and two doors away from the outside world, I was finally safe from the opinions of others, but not from myself. Solitude was my sanctuary and also a training facility where I was determined to build the perfect me.

There were, of course, times I wanted to die—not really to kill myself—just to die, to unravel, to have never existed at all. I’d sit in that closet and fantasize about a world where I didn’t exist and so was free from my fear of all the people who could reject, hurt, or tell me that I was worthless. What a beautiful, black, nothing. And then I would punish myself for thinking that way, for being a coward, and for being selfish.

But, I was still very young, and I knew that misery couldn’t last forever. There must be someone eventually who could save me. I thought it would be a boy (at that time, specifically, Orlando Bloom). But I had hope in the idea that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would find me worthy enough of salvation, even if I wasn’t worthy of it yet (Cue the obvious foreshadowing).

When I was fourteen, I was dragged to a Bible study against my will. That was when things began to change. First, I had people around me who were kind, accepting, and made me feel safe. Second, I realized that being a Christian, despite everything I was shown, meant showing unconditional love in the name of Christ. Lastly, and after about two years of breaking down the old walls, I began to re-connect with God.

I didn’t yet believe in my physical redemption—one where I was made to matter on this earth—but I could believe in a spiritual one—one where God forgave my sins, and believed me to be worthy and beautiful and exactly as he wanted me to be, because my sins we paid for, and I was going to heaven when I finally died.

But I still couldn’t shake that other people didn’t see me that way, and sometimes, most times, I cared a lot more about what other people thought than God. I would come home, even from my Bible study, and as soon as I was alone in my room again, I would start to doubt. “Did I talk too much? Was I in on that joke, or was I the punch-line? Are they all just being nice but wish I weren’t there?”

God’s love still seemed distant and impersonal, and people, well, they had presence, voice, the power to affect my life. I didn’t know I had the ability to not care what people thought. Even when I learned that I did, that God’s love is far more present and matters far, far more than anything else, I was so far tangled up in the lies I had believed, and the authority I had given away by believing them, that I didn’t know where to begin to change.

Even though I’m 26, and I know that God’s opinion is the only one that matters, and there are so many people in my life who love me and have told me I am worthy, that I matter, and that I have value, the lies (having grown strong from so many years of my servitude) are sometimes just too loud. I sometimes can have a conversation where 99% of the things said are positive, but if ONE THING even seems a little negative, it’s all I can remember of what we talked about. “I wasn’t good enough.” “I made a mistake.” “I’m not worthy.” My husband and other friends and family can assure me that they had something nice to say that one time, and I simply don’t remember.

Sometimes, I know that I care too much what other people think and I let it get to me anyway—to the point of absolute, cataclysmic destruction.

Sometimes, I know that all the Enemy wants for me is to never be able to let others’ opinions go, until my self-hate and drive for perfection destroy me.

Sometimes, I feel like all others see are my failures, so that’s all I can see too, and it started a really long time ago.

Sometimes, I still have the urge to hurt myself and even engage in “lesser” versions of self-harm when I’m stressed. And it can happen instinctually, without the planning it takes to physically pick up something sharp and put it to my skin. I can’t diet or put myself on any kind of eating program because it spirals into a fear of food almost immediately, leaving me weeping at the top of the stairs when it’s time to eat.

So what’s the answer? Because, it’s clearly not over. I still deal with feelings of self-doubt, self-hate, and social anxiety. I still crave the safety of solitude and some days don’t want to get out of bed. I still feel like I’m cut a little smaller by every little failure. There are even the occasional darkest moments when I still fondly imagine the beautiful, black nothing of not ever being.

What is it that I would tell myself if I wasn’t drowning in those moments? Drown in something else? Don’t even let yourself get there? Be so steeped in truth that the lies can’t get in?

But fifteen years of steeping in lies, that’s more than just a foothold. That’s a stronghold, and one that makes it so I’m not even able to ask for help when I need it because that makes me a “problem.”

**PLACE TO SKIP TO**

Depression for me isn’t physiological. It’s a big, ugly monster that I fed for fifteen years on believing that only what people think of me could determine my value in the world, and that I didn’t deserve even the slightest relief because I was not one that people could think well of. Even though I beat it back enough to get married and a have two beautiful children and make friends who care about me, when the monster reminds me that it’s still there, I’m paralyzed.

I tried other remedies up till now. I went to God and tried to reconcile with the people who made me feel worthless, who said and did things to feed the fire, but that didn’t help. I went through the arduous process of forgiving those who I felt slowly wore me down over time. That didn’t help either.

Then, finally, I asked him, “Who else? Who else could I possibly need to forgive? Whose opinions do I need to let go of?” And it was like he slipped a mirror in front of me.

I could suddenly see that this has nothing to do with what people think of me. No other person holds any power over me at all. But I had the power, and I clung to every negative word, look, rumor, possibility, and I locked them in a box like a treasure—my collection of lies, my shrine of self-doubt, words I would chant to myself in the dark while I made lists to pour over like scripture, failures that I tallied on my skin like days on a prison wall. 

The secret to self-love is in what authority you are under—what you give the power over your life to. Is that God’s truth, or the big, ugly monster of lies and of this world and your Enemy?

You can be a Christian, and bear fruit, and grow in your relationship with God, while he uses you in amazing ways, even if you’re not 100% under his authority. Even if you haven’t 100% surrendered. Even if there are those areas where you say, “Please, just leave that there. I can’t.”

Well. Bull. Shit.

Because I’m a Christian who has believed those lies far too long and I say, “Nope, not gonna happen anymore. Not today, never again. I KNOW what is true and I’m ready to believe it NOW! I’m not wasting anymore time.”

So what to do?

I started to do the exact opposite of what the lies tell me to do (Please make sure if you choose this method that you do it prayerfully and with others behind you, because it gonna get UGLY).

Number 1, I forgive myself. I forgive the one who told me I was worthless, who wouldn’t let me eat, or go outside, or call for help. I forgive the one who demanded my blood over and over and over again. I forgive the one who could take the best days of my life and turn them into hours of being plagued and paralyzed by questions that never mattered to begin with.

With more difficultly, I forgive the one who made mistakes, acted foolishly or out of fear, and hurt other people. I forgive the one who isn’t the perfect wife or mom or person. I forgive the one who let the monster run free for fifteen years. I forgive until I can say to her, “I love you,” and “Let’s finally get better.”

Number 2, I ask my Father to forgive me for handing his authority over me to the Enemy. I repent for the lies I believed about his child and the pain I caused her. And I ask for all the strength he can give for what comes next.

Number 3, I start practicing acting like I’m a child of God.

I feel like I’m not worth anyone’s time. I’m gonna ask for help.

I would only be a problem at that party? I’m gonna go.

I have nothing to offer? I’m gonna find someone to pray for.

That blog post is stupid and makes me seem pathetic and petty? Imagonna post it.

And all the while, I keep asking God, "Am I still doing this right? Am I still acting the way I should? Am I still being your light for others?" And if his answer is, “Yes,” then I keep trucking, one little victory, one little step at a time. Not looking at the failures, but only at the ways today was maybe better than a month ago and what I want for tomorrow. And I keep forgiving myself.

And maybe, maybe one day I won’t feel like my skin is tearing apart when I ignore the lies.

Maybe one day I won’t feel like I’m about to fly into a thousand pieces when I don’t punish myself for my mistakes.

Maybe one day the monster of self-hate and self-doubt won’t just get smaller, maybe it will die!

And maybe you can kill yours too.