A huge thank you to my lovely sister Brittin for helping me to write this. I love you and I'm so proud of you.
Depression. I don’t fully understand it, I don’t know what causes it, I don’t know first hand what it’s like to wrestle through it. But I do know that it’s dark. It almost stole the life of a girl I was close to at one point. It made numerous friends of mine believe that their only escape, their only way of understanding their own pain, was by harming themselves. And for the past seven months, it haunted my little sister.
Again, I can’t speak from personal experience as to what it is like to walk through depression. I’ve never fully understood it but I’ve indirectly felt it’s effects numerous times, and I know I’m not the only one in this position. So to help me understand it more, to help others understand it more, I asked my sister, Brittin, to co-author this article with me and try to put into words what it is like to walk through such thick darkness. She very willingly and gently sat down with me and read words she’d written in her journal during some of her hardest nights. As her sister, my heart broke yet my eyes were opened a little bit more. With her permission, I’m going to share what she said:
“Depression is weird. It’s like you’re drowning, and everyone else around you is swimming, and they just tell you to swim harder but then don’t offer you a hand.
There’s a wall of fog that follows you around and it separates you from reality and from everyone else. You can see them, but they can’t really see you.
You feel like you’re a ghost, like you’re invisible. You get cold easily, but not just on the outside--inside too… it’s weird to try to explain.
The anxiety--a lot of times you don’t know what you’re anxious about or what’s freaking you out. It just comes out of nowhere and you can’t identify it.
It makes you want to hide in a corner and you feel stuck, kind of paralyzed.
You can’t concentrate on anything, you can’t focus on anything and you lose all motivation to do anything. You’re numb, a blank feeling of only existing. And if you’re not numb, you just feel really sad and can’t quite pinpoint why. Or you feel angry--you get irritable, and every little thing makes you mad. But you feel like you’ll never experience happiness again because it’s so gloomy, and sometimes you feel like you don’t deserve happiness in the first place.
It’s almost like you get so lost in your own head that you aren’t ever truly present, and you question your sanity.
And in your head you know that there are people around you who care; your logic knows that. But depression has this a way of speaking lies into that… like 'sure, they care about me, but I don’t bring much to their lives'. And you don’t feel super important or necessary to anybody. It’s hard to explain because you know in your head it isn’t true but you feel so strongly that it is.”
-Brittin Lane
Depression is dark. It’s painful. If you’ve walked through it, I want you to know that you and your story matter. You matter. I don’t know why you have to walk through this darkness, but I want to encourage you to keep putting one foot in front of the other and don’t keep it to yourself. Talk about it. Let others into the struggle, expose the darkness you’re fighting. It’s easier to fight a battle with an army than it is to fight by yourself. You’re not alone, and you will make it through.
And if you have a loved one walking through depression, I want to tell you that I understand how that too is difficult. It’s painful watching someone you care about trapped in darkness and not knowing quite how to help.
When my sister was walking through some of her darker moments, I often felt helpless, because nothing I said or did seemed to be helping at all. Everything in me wanted to make it better, but I couldn’t. All I really knew how to do was keep loving her as best as I could. I asked Brittin what she would say to someone who was watching a loved one walk through darkness. And her answer was so simple yet ringing with truth: “Keep loving them.”
In other words, walk through the darkness with them. Continue to encourage them. Genuinely ask how they are doing and deeply listen to their answers. Pray for them and with them. Fight for them when they can’t fight for themselves. And don’t give up on them. I know it sometimes seems like nothing is helping like the darkness will never go away. But hang in there. Keep loving. Because ultimately, “love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8). Love heals.
Depression is more than a bad day, more than a bad mood. But even the darkest nights eventually see the light of dawn. So please hang on. If you are walking with someone through it, don’t give up on them. Keep loving deeply. And if you are trapped in the darkness yourself, then don’t give up on yourself. It’s okay to not be okay, and you aren’t alone. This too shall pass. You matter more than you know, dear one. The light is coming.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” –John 1:5
