Why?

If you're reading this, you probably already know me. If not, then you may get to know me better than you would want to through my writing. (That might actually be true for those that already know me as well) Anyway, for those of you that know me, you might be asking, "Why is the blog of a 28-year-old man titled 'Life at 22'?" I'll get to that in a little bit.

Firstly, the big admission. I suffer from depression, and have for a while. The earliest I can remember feeling depressed was back in 7th grade, when I was 11 (for those that don't know, I had skipped 6th grade). That's 17 years of depressing thoughts. Usually, it's quiet and easy to ignore (and hide). Generally, it spikes in May and June--right around my birthday. Occasionally, it will rear its ugly head at other times, but May and June, it's downright predictable. I call it the "birth month blues", and it sucks--not just then, but whenever it happens.

Now we'll get back to the title. This year, during my "birth month blues", I was feeling low, and tried to pray. The first thing that popped into my head was "My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?" I was, of course, quoting some of Jesus' last words on the cross (Matthew 27:46) and He, in turn was quoting Psalm 22, which fit quite well with what I was feeling at the time. Some key passages:

• Verse 2--"O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest"
• Verses 6 & 7--"...I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me;..."

Now, of course these are not reflections of what was, just reflections of how I felt. And so, a title was born.

As for why I'm writing this, I guess it's because back when I had my last blog, writing was a stress reliever of sorts. I haven't written on that one in almost two years now. I miss being able to just vent. Why now? Well, again, during that last "birth month blues", I sat down with my connection group leader and opened up about all this. Afterwards, I told him that I would seek help... That was just over two months ago. I kept putting it off, because I started feeling better, and so "it'll be fine" became my refrain.

Yesterday, I finally made that call. I'm still waiting for a call back to actually get an appointment set up, but it's going. Why the change? Two things: Robin Williams and a bad weekend. The link in that previous sentence goes to an article about how most--if not all--comedians are funny because it gets them noticed, gets them positive attention. Inside, they're damaged goods, unable to like themselves because it seems that no one likes them--exactly how I feel when the bad times hit.

As for the bad weekend....Well, that would be last weekend. Miscommunication plagued me that weekend. On Saturday at work, I walked into a mess. To make a long story short, I was yelled at by a customer due to miscommunication. I went to sleep at my usual 2 am Sunday morning, and was awakened at 6:30 by a text from one of my roommates asking if I was serving at church that morning. Due to some more miscommunication (partially by me, partially by others) I was on the schedule, but thought that someone else was taking my place. The stress piling up kept me from falling back asleep. I later got a call asking if I was coming in...and that's when I started to worry. I found out when I arrived that no one had thought that they were on for this weekend, and (luckily) someone had stepped up a mere fifteen minutes before the service. At that point, all my frustration, stress and anger turned inward....and woke up my depression.

After the service, I decided to "pound the pavement and gab with God," aka walk five miles to work. When I got to the UI Hospital area, I decided to stop and send an email apologizing for my part in the mixup that morning...and that's how I wound up sitting on a bench, hunched over and crying for 10 minutes. I eventually pulled myself together (at least on the outside) and kept going. As I was walking, I realized a good description for how I felt: like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, and my knees were starting to buckle. That second part, however, was not just metaphorical. My knees were actually starting to buckle. Every two or three steps, my knees would threaten to drop me on my face. It was getting hard for me to walk. ME! A guy who, just by living his normal life, walks about 40 miles a week--sometimes over 10 miles a day.

Work that day was pretty normal, other than the fact that I just wanted to go back to bed and sleep for about a week, which I responded to by self-medicating with caffeine. I tried going to sleep at around 2 am again...notice the word "tried" there. It's important. Around 4, I realized that I was still awake, it was 4 in the morning, and I had 7.5 hours before I had to leave for work. At 6, I gave up and went to shower, since bed is the last place you want to be when you can't sleep. I got to work feeling exhausted (which is to be expected when you've gotten 5 hours of sleep in the past two days), stressed, depressed, nauseous, and lightheaded. I had also been "riding the d-train" as we put it during my trip to China. I was thinking "if I make it through this shift and get home without passing out, throwing up, or messing myself, I will be shocked." I was shocked, but it was that point that I decided I was going to make the call when I got up the next day.

So here we are, waiting for a response to a call I should have made years ago. I don't know how often I'm going to update this, but this will be my walk through depression...and hopefully, leaving it behind forever.