If you were to ask my friends and family what kind of person I am, they would tell you that I’m the life of the party who becomes friends with everyone she meets. That it is rare to see me without a Cheshire cat grin across my face. And to some extent that’s true. The love and grace I experience being a child of God allows me to walk around with my head held high. I am constantly reminding myself that I am a treasured young woman.
But for almost 15 years, I’ve noticed that even with this realisation, I wasn’t happy. Growing up in the church (and when I say growing up I mean it literally; the church was in my living room) it was ingrained in me that things like depression and being sad were not things Christians experienced or went through. So why was I feeling this way? As a believer depression was not meant to be my ‘portion,’ as my mother would say.
So instead of facing my feelings, I kept up appearances and found great comfort in doing so; I kept that Cheshire grin on my face, continued to live up to my ‘life of the party’ status and it was all so easy. I was well known at my university and used to leave for lectures 5-10 minutes early because I was guaranteed to run into someone and talk to them for a bit. I pushed all my bad feelings into the abyss of my mind, and played the role of ‘Honey’.
No one knew what was really going on. I’ve had enough medical problems in my life; I was not going to add to them. I was determined that depression and anxiety was not going to be added to the list and I wasn’t going to burden others around me. And that worked for a while, but I guess the vacant look in my eyes was clearly visible to those who were closest to me.
Rachael and Louise are the two people in my life that I no longer hide anything from. The abyss had grown to big and was affecting my everyday life, slowly but surely the Cheshire grin was fading and the ‘Honey’ persona was getting harder and harder to maintain. They are the ones who forced me to confront my emotions and have helped me every step of the way.
It took a lot for me to be vulnerable with them, but slowly I’m learning that being vulnerable and facing my feelings isn’t me being weak. It’s me acknowledging God’s strength. So my advice to women who struggle with these feelings is to build that support network of those you can let in; use them as a sounding board. They don’t necessarily have to give you advice, but you can use them as an outlet for your emotions.
Life and emotion are synonymous; you can’t have one without the other even if one is hard to deal with. Lastly I would talk to your doctor to see what he/she can recommend to help you deal with these emotions, whether it be counselling or medication, you have to face the problem head on. I buried my head in the sand for years and achieved nothing. Now that I am working through my emotions, I feel like my life is back on track and the future is hopeful. Or as I would say, it’s ‘In God’s Hands’.
By Honey Gabriel