When I’m in a low, dark place I feel like I can’t move. I feel like my choices lead me to this hole that I’m in. I tried digging myself out of it, and ended up even lower. Stuck, Crushed, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. I want to scream, but I’m afraid of setting off an avalanche, or a landslide.
When I’m low, I carry this hole inside me. I go about the routine of the day: afraid to change.
It’s not that anyone is holding me back per se. I just can’t trust myself to make anything better. I can only choose to make things worse. I don’t trust my ability to make choices. I’m convinced that I can’t choose. And so the depression takes hold.
I reach up to a higher power. I receive instruction. But I can’t do that! You don’t know me, I mess everything up. I reason away the instructions I received. No, a power beyond myself would not expect that from me. I don’t have what it takes to pull that off.
I can’t trust myself, and so I can’t trust anyone else. And I was alone in this.
Learning to Trust Myself Again
But then one day, I tried again. I reached up. I said, “you know what, if You say I am good enough, then I will try to believe it too.” I reasoned that maybe it would make things better, maybe it would make things worse, either way, I would have someone there in that hole with me.
I trusted that decision that I had made. If things went bad, I trusted my decision. If things were good, I trusted my decision. I saw that it was possible to make good choices again. I began to trust myself and so I began to trust others again too.
I was challenged to do things. I would do them. If I just didn’t have enough in me, I just borrowed it. Not enough strength? My Higher Power had plenty. Not enough Patience? Yes plenty of that too. Humility was the thing I borrowed the most. And I started to mold my humility to be more like the Higher Power’s. My humility looked a great deal like people pleasing. When I borrowed it, the Higher Power’s humility looked like deeply valuing all people, including myself. It looked like standing firm. Kindness and Courage.
At times, I would get out of the hole. I would stretch, rest up, and take joy in it. I grew my support system while I had the energy to do so. I knew it was temporary and took what strength I could. At times I’d be back in the hole again. I applied self compassion and self care. I leaned on my support system. I knew it was temporary. And this time I wasn’t alone.