Blinded By Fear

I have been wanting to write another post for the past week, but I am only now figuring out how to communicate what it is I want to say. As I have mentioned in previous posts (I think), I have drifted away from God throughout the past several months. I have also drifted away from certain relationships, in the hopes that it would give me freedom to not care anymore. I know, straying from God to seek freedom? A little messed up maybe, but those were my thoughts. I believed it was simply easier to not care, then put in the effort again and again to only be let down. Now, the past month has been a little different, as I have been noticing that I miss that part of life. There was a time when I had a strong belief in God, and when I felt I was being looked after. Those thoughts burnt out somewhere along the line. Here is my thought process: If I want to get back to that place of comfort, I need to figure out what exactly has caused the change.  Perhaps there are many causes, situations, or instances that contributed to the change. However, there is a theme amongst everything. What's the theme you ask? Fear. 

I am unable to think of an area of my life where fear is not present. My fear of marriage, my fear of disappointing, my fear of underachieving, my fear of my illness, my fear of hurt, my fear of holding down a job, my fear to trust, my fear of God. It has become so blatantly clear that it is controlling my life. I say that it's controlling my life because it is affecting my interactions and the way I make decisions. I tend to make decisions not based on what is best, but by what is easiest. Is it easier to tell people what they want to hear to avoid disappointing them? Usually. Is it easier to push people away before they have a chance to hurt you? Some would say yes. It is actually to the point where I tend to not answer my phone because I'm afraid of who is on the other line and what they might say. My anxiety is triggered by fear, which leads to the occasional breakdown. All in all, I'm scared...all the time. 

And yes, I am scared of God. I am scared of giving all of myself over to someone I feel has let me down and abandoned me. I am terrified to trust something I am unable to see, when it has many times led to hurt. I was talking with a friend recently and I had mentioned that it is almost as if I have to completely start over with God, and somehow channel the "younger Ang" when she became a Christian. My friend responded with, "Maybe that could be a good thing." The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize how much sense that makes. Yes, when I became a Christian, I knew I had issues. I had to no idea of the ROOT of all those issues. A lot has been discovered about myself in the past 5 years and I know things about myself that probably would have never come up if I continued on the destructive path that I was on. Sorry, getting back to my point. Focusing on who God is, and not necessarily my "bad experiences" with Him, might be a good place to start. Throughout this mess of time I've been having, I have completely disregarded what I knew of God while putting all of the attention on my bad circumstances and how He was behind them. Anyway, back to basics.

It is the hope that once I get over my fear of God, I will have to stepping stone to deal with the rest of the fear in my life. That's the hope anyway :) I'm still going to have extremely crappy days, and times when my stubborn self will put up a fight. At the end of the day, I want things to get better. I want to get better mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That will take quite some time, but I don't think it's a bad a idea to get the ball rolling now. Unfortunately, these changes can't be done by flicking a switch. Would be nice though, wouldn't it?

Resisting the Irresistible

Lots of different thoughts going on in my head today. All of which seem to come back to how unhappy I am with the person I have become in past several months. For those of you who know me, you already are aware of how open I am in regards to what I'm thinking or how I'm feeling. However, what has always been a routine for me, is becoming more and more difficult to do. I'm not able to share my thoughts as openly as I use to. Somewhere along the way I have become shut off. I'm not sure where or when this happened, but lately it seems that my relationships are suffering just as much as I am.

There was a time when I would be open to talking the happenings (or lack thereof) in my life. Mind you, there are some people whom I would probably never share some things with. I'm referring more to my close friends, my fiance, my mentors, and to a degree, my parents. At some point my connection with these people faded. I still talk to them, often actually. However my latest emotions, feelings and attitudes have created somewhat of a barrier between them. Being in the deep hole that I am in, it has probably taken too long for me to figure this out. Any relationship, whether it's with friends or a marriage, is a two-way deal. You give and you take. I've come to realize that I have had a big problem with the giving aspect. Those people who are most important to me have been giving, constantly in fact. It use to be that I could not take support when it was given to me. Now that I am more accepting of receiving, the giving has been put on the back burner. Because of my unbalanced nature (which for those of you who know me, know that is no understatement), there is a level of frustration that lingers in my relationships. I'm difficult to break through and difficult to support, and people just have a hard time keeping up. Two things to address here: my lack of giving and my resistance towards others.

I have been known to say, "I'm sorry, but I have nothing to give." While I really feel as though that is a true statement, it has also become somewhat of an excuse for my lack of investment in my relationships. One of my traits that people have always brought to my attention, is that I am a very encouraging individual. If you ask anyone if they have received encouragement from me in the past while, the answer would probably be no. This may seem like something small to many people, but it is something that I have been known for. For it to be absent shows me that something within me is missing as well. In terms of what I'm putting towards my relationships with others, I am falling short. This saddens me because my close friends have been such a tremendous support, blessing, gift, or whatever else you want to call them. A lot of times they have been what has kept me going, in a very real way. More and more, it seems that every conversation leads to me. How I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what's new with me, and it generally ends with them giving me words of encouragement or offering support to me. Don't get me wrong, that's great! But what I am giving to them in return? Again, I keep taking, and the relationship becomes all about me. In my mind, this is no good. Losing the ability to give is one that flat out scares me, since what usually follows is loneliness. What could also follow is the inability to recognize when people are giving towards me. I'm almost sure that a level of this has occurred already, which leads me to discuss my resistance. I typically don't realize how resistant I am until after the fact. I'm sure there are several different factors to consider: me wanting to spare my friends of my thoughts, a fear of being turned away, losing trust in others...I'm sure the list could go on. No matter the reason, I miss being able to seek out people when I need someone. In the constant battle between my illness and my life, my illness wins about 98% of the time. This is unfortunate considering the good life I could have if my depression was even somewhat under control. Speaking of which, who the heck is in control anyway? Oh look, a perfect introduction to lead into my resistance with God :)

In the past 2 weeks, I have attended church twice and attended 2 chapel services. That's quite a jump considering I hadn't been to church or chapel since the middle of September.  I explained a little bit in my last post that God and I haven't been cool lately. More accurately, I haven't been cool with God. This has led me to push away any sort of interaction that could potentially lead into a God conversation. To sum it up in one word, resistance. I have avoided conversations with certain people because I knew they would bring up God. I have intentionally stayed away from any church activities or services. I have even got pissed off when hearing worship music being played. Going to these services throughout the past couple weeks, has on some level reminded me how much I miss that part of life. Today I was in a chapel service that was entitled I'm About to do a New Thing. There was a focus on healing, and I could swear that the songs were being sung straight at me. Two songs, There is a Well and I Will Come to You in Silence, were very interesting songs for me to hear with where I'm at. For the first time in a very long time, I was getting teary eyed in a chapel service. Yes, I cry and I'm not ashamed of it :) I'm not going to say that now I am fully restored and that I'm going to run back to God with open arms because of hearing some songs. What I am saying is that is was a reminder, and I would even say a little bit of hope. The fact that I can sense tears coming when hearing certain lyrics, tells me one thing. Somewhere within me, I'm still longing for God. I don't always understand Him and want to trust Him, but the need for Him is still present (as if it never went away). For right now, I will take it.

As much as there is a need to change some things in my life, there is an even greater need for me to get better medically. Finding a doctor, proper medication and continued counselling will hopefully put me at the place where I can be stable minded to work on these things that I have mentioned above.

Patience will be needed.

Random Thoughts: Where I'm At

I will be honest in saying this: my appreciation for life is extremely low. It hurts to say that statement since there are good things that I am thankful for. I have an amazing soon-to-be husband who treats me phenomenally well despite how I treat him. I have 3 beautiful nephews who make me smile every time I see them. I have a few friends that would do just about anything for me. However, at the end of the day the reality of my illness is what brings me down.

Yesterday was an unbearable day that kept me in tears for 14 hours straight. What made it unbearable? The mere fact that my depression has a grip on every area of my life. It takes over my relationships, it affects my work (or lack of work), which then affects my financial status, which is turn ruining my relationship with certain family members. It's almost as if I am spiralling out of control and there's nothing that can stop me, or being in such a deep hole that it's impossible to see any light. I could use many analogies. None of which could explain the reality of living in a constant battle: the battle between choosing to fight or choosing to give up. I am not saying this for attention, pity or  any other form of sympathy. I am saying this to make it a reality, for myself and for those who don't know. Every day, I wake up and struggle with the suicidal thoughts. To many people, that's a selfish way to think. To me, it's simple. I'm tired. I'm tired of living with the constant pain, and this pain can't be described as stabbing, shooting or burning. It's an all-encompassing pain that slowly eats away at every fiber of one's being. It's beyond simply feeling sad and miserable. It is pure darkness. No words can fully describe what it is like to live with this illness. And I'm by no means saying that depression is the worst thing on earth. I do not believe that. In fact, it is one of the reasons why I kept quiet for so long. I am stating these facts because I have personally experienced this life for over half of my life (13 years). If you were living in pain for that long, would you not be tired? Wouldn't you want to escape? This is where I'm coming from. The fact that you can not escape leaves me with one option, and it's not a good one. I will say that while I struggle with those thoughts, the fear of the unknown is enough to keep me here. I have no idea what would happen afterwards. Which brings me to my next thought process. Where the hell is God?

Please don't tell me to pray more. Please don't tell me to be careful of my sins. Please don't tell me to read the Bible. Everyone needs to pray more. Everyone needs to sin less. Everyone needs to read the Bible. So really, how much are you helping? If anything, you're making me feel like I'm responsible for my depression, which I'm not. You're making it sound like I'm being punished for not doing those things, which I'm not. At the end of the day, my relationship and view of God is messed up. My depression challenges my thoughts in regards to what I believe. There were times when I turned to God in my depressive states. But here's the candid truth. At this point, I feel let down. I feel abandoned. I feel betrayed. It's hard to keep believing in something that doesn't make itself known (like I said earlier, I have tunnel vision which makes the positive things almost oblivious to me). I don't understand how God allows this. No matter how much scripture I read, I can not seem to understand. And I don't think I ever will.

To sum it all up, this illness is powerful and allows for lots of distorted thinking. My honesty in this post should be taken as a reality. I wasn't going to hold back just because some people might have a hard time reading what I wrote. With that being said, I will also finish by saying that a determined and tough woman. Even though I am extremely tired of living this way, there is still a desire (somewhere inside me) to fight.

Many people are constantly wondering how I'm doing, so I plan on posting new blogs often. I apologize for my random thoughts, as this sort of turned into a venting session.

Introduction...

I know what you're thinking...."Hey Ang, what's with blog? Is updating your facebook statuses not enough anymore?" To that question, I would have to say no they are not. After being mocked regarding my "deep" status updates and my lack of explanation for them, I thought that perhaps a blog is a better way to go. I mean, it's not like I can sum up all of my thoughts in the little spot that facebook provides me, which simply states, "What's on your mind?" I don't feel right posting my latest questions about life, in the same place in which people post the fact that they are taking a piss. (by the way, I have probably posted that as my status at some point).

This is simply an outlet for me, and if you happen to gain even the slightest bit of understanding from it, great. 

Till next time.