How Hard It Really Is: A Short, Honest Book About Depression

by J.S. Park

It feels like you're constantly drowning but you just won't die.

I feel powerless against myself.

It feels like forever while it's there and as though it never happened when it's over.

It feels like the question, Why?

we do have plenty to say about depression, but it seems no one wants to listen, which only imprisons those with depression even further.

When it's expressed, it's often hand-waved as nothing more than "sadness" or "introversion" or "laziness."

which means depression, in the end, is impossible to both fully understand and describe, even for the person with depression.

I hope you will not hide.

"I'm just ... nowhere. And somewhere else.

"I feel this way all the time. A sort of hum underneath everything. But it's not a feeling. There's no feeling. It's a constant nothing."

I have no reason to be like this.

If depression robs you of your ability to make sense of life, then any advice or solution is not going to reach into the heart of depression.

I Can't Handle the Me that I See in You

I can't bear to look into my own uncertainty when I see yours.

"Don't cry," we might say, even though very often, crying is the only way to heal through the river of all we have held inside.

"You're not alone, you have me."

we help those who cannot help themselves.

We're inclined to deflect the burden rather than to share it.

The sick twist here's that I was just depressed enough to want to drive into a tree, but too depressed to try driving into one if it was difficult to do.

Then I realized I had already committed suicide, by refusing to live.

complete numbness

Never perfectly is okay.

And in the end, sometimes there's no reason at all.

Your depression is yours. No one can say your crisis is too small for your emotional fallout. While this doesn't mean we should wallow in self-pity, it also means that we don't have to justify our reactions. Your process is yours. Your grief is yours. Your depression, as hard as it is, is owned by you and you alone.

The hurting will silently suffer, afraid to look like a self-serving faker.

I don't blame them: my depression is so severe, I cannot imagine enduring with someone like myself.

Dealing with a depressed person like me is exhausting and draining, and it requires much more help than many of us can give. Those who stayed with me had a capacity for grace far beyond any human measure, including my own.

"Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness [the depressed are] going through.

just had this profound sadness I couldn't explain. It didn't seem to be about anything in particular. There was no big event that made me sad. It just happened.

I was depressed for no reason. There was no traumatic event that triggered it, though that's happened

No one can ever say that having faith would exclude us from being depressed.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

And whether by bread or water or a touch from a friend, God is there, a current of the divine, walking me home through the desert, until I am finally home with Him. There's, too, a Body of Bread and Living Water that has come for me. There's, in Jesus, sustenance, the friend, the healer, the Greater Nabi, the authority over winds and mountains, a coursing fire, a gentle whisper, the God who became a man just like me, and loved me enough to stay on that cursed tree.

God, somehow, by becoming one of us in flesh-embodying solidarity, gets my depression, more than I can dare to fathom.

It's not that when you have faith, your depression is gone, but when you're depressed, your faith can help you through.

He's not mad. He is cheering for you and rooting for you this very second. He's okay about all the things before. He sent His Son for that very reason.

You don't have to live up to everyone else's vision for your life. You're finally, finally free. You are loved. I am loved. As much as I love you, dear friend, He loves you infinitely more. Believe it. Walk in it. Walk with Him.

I'm here, just barely. So is He, completely.