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This Mental Health Awareness Week, I wanted to share some of my recent experiences of navigating both the ordinary and the significantly less ordinary situations in which I have found myself in day to day life. 2022 was a very hard year for me. Mental health crisis aside, I spent two and a half months…
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Tempest
When simple words don’t seem to serve justice to the depth of darkness that depression brings, perhaps a metaphor will better suffice, will give a better picture of how it really feels. Like a storm, a hurricane, like being lost out at sea, surrounded by a flood of apathy and despondency, or caught in a…
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Weary
‘How are you?’ I hear, The question with which most conversations begin. ‘I’m tired’ I say, A whole thesaurus of words ready for when I’m feeling more creative. Exhuasted, run down, burnt out ‘Knackered’ as we say up north Spent, drained, shattered, weary. Weary is the one that seems to encompass it all. Weary of…
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Chasing Joy in the Midst of Depression
Whilst we can’t meet together as churches right now, that hasn’t stopped us coming together virtually. At The Globe Church one of the main ways we do this is through weekly Bible studies. And during lockdown we’ve been looking at something the Apostle Paul talks about in his letter to the church in Galatia: the…
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Your Will Be Done?
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done…’ But wait, I say the words but I don’t echo them in my heart. You see, Its easy to say ‘your will be done’ when God’s will is exactly the same as ours, But what if his will is…
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Routine in Lockdown
The past few days I have woken up with no motivation whatsoever. A week into lockdown, finding a reason to get up and get going is proving hard. I don’t do too well without structure. Ironically, the past several years have lacked structure for me, first studying an arts degree and then working on a zero-hour…
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Rejection Fatigue
A few hours ago I discovered that the museum I work in will close until further notice. I work in a kitchen so working from home isn’t an option. Given that I’m on a zero hour contract I can pretty safely assume that my income will cease. No measures have been put in place to…
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Mental Health and Self-Isolation
Given the new measures put in place and the advice given by the government this afternoon it is clear that many of us will have to self-isolate in the coming weeks and months. As someone who struggles with depression, the idea of ‘self-isolation’ isn’t such a foreign concept. However, to me self-isolation would usually mean…
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And yet…
I gain consciousness slowly, lifting myself out of the comfy darkness of deep slumber, a few brief seconds of still and harmless peace before reality falls over me, pressing at my skin. How could I have forgotten? The power of the grief that hits me is so overwhelming that, within seconds of waking, tears threaten…
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At the Valley’s Edge
She had walked many valleys just like this one. She knew this sort of darkness, knew the feeling or, more precisely, fear, that she would never make it back up on to level ground. But she had forgotten how awful it could be. How dense the darkness could be. She remembered the engulfing blackness only…
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Staying Above the Water
When I’m feeling particularly low, I often imagine myself neck deep in water, fighting to keep myself from falling under, fighting to take each breath. Depression can often feel like this. An overwhelming force that has a life and a current of its own. The fight to keep going, together up each day, to get…
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Slow Falling
It was a slow process, for her, a gradual sinking rather than a dramatic fall. So slow that it might escape your notice, as it did hers, until you’re knee deep, waist deep, chest deep in the mud. It was the mundane things that were crumbling, no dramatic change. The hands on the clock grew…
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In the Shadow of Your Wings
Curled up on the sofa, I gazed out at the little bit of visible sky that I could see from my typical urban London flat. The building stood solid and firm as the traffic rushed by, every day, and every night. It was never quite dark here. The lights of the cars and the lampposts…
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Forgetting Me, Remembering Him
Diary Entry – Tuesday 8th August: We were walking by the river in Ho Chi Minh City. It was a hot and humid day, but down by the water I didn’t feel so exhausted. The morning had been hard for me. We had been walking the busy streets of District 3, stopping at intervals to…
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The Darkest Valley
Depression has cast a shadow on my life for over five years now. It hit its worst when I was sixteen. I thought that it would never change, that I would never get better. But then I did. And yet it stayed lurking nearby, and I could feel it coming back again last Christmas, sneaking…
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The Lilies of the Field 