Depression is a crutch; it's probably the easiest way out because anyone can choose it. It's dark and welcoming, blanketing every thought and fear into a pseudo-sense of warmth that sacrifices self in one fell swoop of midnight black, accepting of a numbing coldness that somehow mimics peace, yet entirely consumes said thoughts and fears, angers and disappointments, heartache and anguish. And yet still does nothing for them.
Submission.
Attrition.
Frightening, but somehow sickly benevolent.
And so invariably wrong.
The remarkable thing about any of us who have met with such blackness is that we feel as though there are no more answers; we've done everything we could possibly do within the realm of our own will and condition to supersede whatever chronic ills have served to asphyxiate life, hope, and outlook.
And yet, therein lies the fallacy: will-power.
Will-power, while noble and championed as if to Olympic proportions, it is only ever as strong as our emotions.
But, emotions shift.
They are not real.
They come and go as chaff in the wind and change perceived realities upon the highs and lows we surf while embracing them. They are entirely dependent upon the thoughts we allow and those we discard.
Think about that.
And then think about responsibility.
Compassion is perhaps the most viable healing space of being in this life. It is the only way out. It begins the moment we recognize that depression is not an illness. It begins the moment when we honestly recognize that any and every negative whisper is absolute deceit.
Blanket stop.
So, listen! It's not you. There's nothing wrong with you.
You just forgot about hope and allowed the darkness inside. You thought of all the things that had happened - scars, rejections, self-flagellation, circumstance, disappointments, mockery, dissonance, misplaced expectation, credible abuse, and any and every voice that railed against you. You allowed them in.
You tried quotes. You changed your diet. You lost weight. You found love; you rejected love. You met loneliness and stayed a while. You fought and cared and rallied and cried; you shifted in every possible way, but yet you still felt the pull.
Downward.
Daily.
Drenched in sadness.
Wrenching pain.
Haunted.
Deeply wounded.
But, oh - child! Welcome to life! Did you imagine that being fully functional, joyful, happy-go-lucky, and relatively at peace, meant no more trial, insidious whispers, or bouts with insecurity?! Did you really encapsulate "making it" and the term "self-actualization" as this cosmically mistake-proof super-hero safety suit of inviolable comparison??!
Soft smiles.
Oh, no.
With all the gentleness in my soul, please know that the truth is that evil and ills will continue to knock at your door every day of your life, until your dying day. They will not relent. But they are not for you.
They are not for you.
It matters naught who you are - whether seemingly powerful, or just beginning to understand - such desperate attention for your spirit is not a statement of your ability, station, or cognizance of being; it is inconsequential noise meant to bring down as many as it can into unparalleled suffering.
Believe that, if you are to believe anything.
The hopeful don't become so because they've somehow reached an existential realm of purity untouched. The hopeful still get pricked day in, and day out; evil continues to rail out of nowhere, particularly after a sweetness of growth and/or epiphany has been reached. Evil wants to slam sideways at every slide of fate or forsaken opportunity.
And it might. And can. And will try.
So, don't rate yourself upon whether you falter or misstep; you are human and beautiful, worthy, and a child of God.
Rate yourself under His Glory, sacrifice, and love. Give over to the fallibility that absolutely catapults your responsibility, resilience, knowledge, credibility, and powerful design. Give over to being all that God meant you to be, His. Nothing more, nothing less.
We are not perfect. And that is a gift.
Renounce any ideal or reckoning that might claim such unyielding absolutes and then give over to love.
Embrace every dip and turn, bend and curve. Embrace life. Rise. For you have God at your back and His breath in your lungs.
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