I grew up being told that if in order to be a “good Christian” I needed to forgive those who did wrong to me. If I wanted God to forgive me of my sins against Him, I needed to forgive others of their sins against me. I mean, the Lord’s Prayer, what we are taught is the “perfect prayer” says, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
If we forgive others, then God can forgive us and we can have a chance of an amazing future in Heaven.
What I was never taught, what I never learned growing up, was how to forgive myself, so while I was busy forgiving others, so that I could have a future chance in Heaven, I was living in a version of Hell on earth.
I wasn’t taught how to forgive myself for being “stupid” enough to trust my boyfriend to go with him to his friends house.
I didn’t learn how to forgive myself for being so “slutty” that I wore a knee-length denim skirt and a long sleeve button up shirt that day, that I had buttoned all the way up, but somehow, I must have been “asking for it.”
I never knew how to forgive myself for being so embarrassed about what “I” did that day, the day my boyfriend decided that I had been teasing him long enough, that he forced himself inside of me, without even taking my clothes off, that I didn’t tell anybody for months, and I “allowed” it to keep happening for another eight months.
I had forgiven him for what he did, so I could go to Heaven, but I had never forgiven myself. I get upset when people blame victims, but I had been doing that my whole life to myself.
Then a few months ago, my therapist asked me when I was going to forgive myself, as I was leaving. I was so angry with him, for the entire week between sessions. That question was all I could think about.
Forgiving myself? I struggled with it for almost two weeks. I cried, I screamed. I yelled at my therapist. I finally forgave myself.
I had to realize I was a fifteen year old child. I was not in control of that situation in any way. He drove me there, I knew something felt off, but I had no way of leaving and nobody to call, no way to call anyone since there were no cell phones back then. Once he started, he had me pinned down and was about 200 pounds to my 90 pounds, there was no way for me to sop him.
I didn’t have anyone to turn to when it was over. There were no safe adults in my life. The adults at school would have to call the police, my mom would think I was a slut and a sinner. If I told the adults at school my mom would eventually find out, which is exactly what happened months later. She ended up telling me that I had to marry him.
Since I forgave myself, I no longer feel like I’m living in my own personal version of Hell on earth. My thoughts have slowed down (most of the time) and I can sleep at night. I don’t constantly feel like I’m in fight or flight mode.
Forgiving others, is something I recommend if you need to in order to move on from them.
Forgiving yourself, I highly recommend, I don’t think you can live your life to it’s fullest potential if you don’t.
I often have my students use their critical thinking skills by answering what if questions.
What if the Britain had won the Revolutionary War?
What if John F. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated?
What if the nuclear war hadn’t been used against Japan?
What if you were born into a family with billions of dollars?
What if you were born to a mom in prison?
What if you were a teen parent?
This type of questions get students out of thinking about what did happen and into thinking about other possibilities. It can open their minds to seeing other options so when they are faced with making decisions, they may be able to see multiple ways to handle the situation.
A few days ago, I played a dangerous game of “what if?” I asked myself the question, “What if my parents had taught me that it’s okay to say no.”
I learned from a very young age, that the answer to a request from my parents was always, “YES!” If we answered with a “no” there were consequences from being forced to do whatever it was through coercion or being yelled at and belittled. The consequences always involved feeling unloved.
As I grew up, I believed that if I loved someone, and they loved me, I wasn’t allowed to say no to them under any circumstance, no matter how uncomfortable I was with the situation.
What if my parents had taught me that it’s okay to say no?
Would I have been sexually abused and raped at fifteen years old by an eighteen year old student leader at church?
Would I have left someone who loved me and offered me a safe place because my mom refused to let me date him?
Would I have married someone who used me to cover up the fact that he liked boys and treated me more like a roommate than a wife?
I eventually had to stop the what if game, because it was leading me down a very deep, dark, rabbit hole, that left me curled in the fetal position in tears. I have a great life with two amazing kids, my own house, a decent job, but sometimes, the what if game gets the best of me.
Now I know that it IS okay to say no to people. It’s all about setting boundaries. If they love you, they will still love you, even if you have to say no every once in awhile.
In sociology I teach my students about ideal culture and real culture. Ideal culture is the values and norms that a society claims to have while real culture are the values and norms that a society actually lives in their day-to-day lives. I also teach my students that we have society as a whole, like all people on earth, but that is also broken down into many different sub-groups, like people living in a country or region; people who identify as a specific gender or no gender, people of a certain ethnic group, friend groups, religious groups, political groups, families, what job you have, etc.
Basically, society can be broken up into many different types of groups and within each group there is an ideal culture and then there is what the people of that group actually live out every day. The ideal culture is usually unattainable, but most people do their best to get there. What’s that old saying? Aim for the moon, if you miss, you may hit a star.
I have grappled with this idea my whole life, but only recently, with my therapist, have I realized it. We are taught by media and society that families are supposed to be safe places to learn and grow. That we are supposed to be able to trust our parents to be there and take care of us when we need support. For many people, that’s their truth and I’m so thankful for them, but for me and many people like me, that’s not the case. Our families were a place of constant heartache and deep wounds that followed us from childhood into adulthood that we are still working on healing from so they will stop affecting our relationships and our lives.
this is just a picture I found online, I have no idea who they are.
When I was twenty years old I married the guy I had been dating since my senior year of high school, who was a youth pastor. I had this idea that marriage was going to be a partnership and that we’d be happy. Not long after we were married, he told me that he didn’t think he’d ever be happy being married to me. As a Christian woman, I had been taught that it was up to me to keep my husband happy, so for the next five years I did whatever I could to make him happy. I did whatever he told me to do and basically lost myself in the process of becoming the woman that he could be happy being married to. This nice Christian man that I had married was actually a controlling abuser, who ended up getting arrested for abusing boys. I divorced him.
The biggest conflict for me has come from the evangelical church and many people who call themselves Christians. I was raised in a Pentecostal church and switched to a Baptist church when I was twenty-six years old. They both claim to live by what the Bible teaches.
To me that is when Jesus says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. (From Matthew 22:37-40)
Yet it seems to me, that many Christians have all kinds of rules about who they have to love and who gets into heaven and who gets to be considered Christian. A few of the churches I attended, actually taught that there were denominations within Christianity that were not “real” Christians and would not go to heaven when they died.
They didn’t show me love when I was sexually assaulted by a leader in their children’s ministry or when my ex-husband was arrested. Both the churches that I was attending at those times asked me to no longer attend. When my ex-husband was arrested, that pastor disparaged me so badly from the pulpit, that my friend wouldn’t even tell me what was said.
I know that ideal culture and real culture are not the same. I know that ideal culture is unattainable, but the people that have been in my life, from these small, little sub-groups of the larger society, seem to have not even been trying.
I know that nobody is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect and I never will be, but I hope that strive every day to live up to the best in the ideal society. I know I won’t attain it, I am after all a flawed human being. I also need to remember that everyone else is a flawed human being, none of us are perfect. None of us will attain that ideal culture, but I can surround myself with people who strive for that, who actually hope for that type of world, who don’t just pay it lip service and then behave in a completely opposite way.
Here’s to the hope of getting close to our ideal culture!
Last Sunday I completed another trip around the sun and celebrated my birthday with family. Yesterday is when I celebrated with friends. We spent the day in Santa Cruz, soaking in the sun, enjoying the delicious food, like a Texas Donut (thank you for sharing Bev!), watching a sea lion miss jumping out of the water onto the platform, riding the carousel that is 120 years old this year and generally having a fabulous time laughing and relaxing.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself and did NOT want the day to end. We even finished the day off with ice cream for dinner. Like I said it was a FANTASTIC day!
I haven’t had the best time since March 2020. When the world flipped upside down for everybody, my personal world also seemed to flip upside down and my mental health took a nosedive. I’ve shared that there was even a point that I didn’t even want to be alive any more in COVID world. My anxiety was through the roof!
Through talking with a counselor, a family member and a friend, as well as a LOT of time talking to God, I’m back to “normal”… mostly. At night, when I should be asleep, Anxiety still likes to sneak in and keep me awake with all the “what ifs” and “should’ves.” I don’t like Anxiety very much and I’m usually able to tell it to take a hike after a few restless minutes of a racing mind. I don’t always win though. Sometimes I lie awake from 3:00 am until my alarm goes off and face the day exhausted, hoping for a better night to come.
But yesterday. Those days I treasure. I can share with trusted friends what I feel. I don’t have to be invisible or make myself smaller so they feel bigger. I don’t have to say just the right thing to keep them feeling comfortable or to keep them as friends. They are my friends, through thick and thin; NO MATTER WHAT!
I’m so thankful to have such an amazing handful of people in my life that I can trust and call my friends. I didn’t get to be with all of them yesterday, but I’m thankful for all of my friends just the same. I would NOT have survived this pandemic without them.
Thank you to all my friends for being so AWESOME!!!!
In 2018 a person that I looked up to growing up sued me for telling the truth. The truth I told was difficult for that person to hear and they had a choice to make, they could admit their mistake and ask for forgiveness, or continue to deny it. They continued to deny it, publicly calling me and others who shared the same truth I did, liars. They gathered an army of defenders on social media in an attempt to get me to back down. They sent me texts through various messaging apps to intimidate me and get me to recant what I said.
This person was a pillar in the Christian community I grew up in. They were considered a role model, someone to look up to, to admire, to strive to be like. When I told the truth and they decided to try to cover it up in lies and disparaging stories about me and others who had similar true stories as well as attempting to intimidate me into silence, I was shocked that anyone, let alone a person I grew up admiring, would behave that way.
In the midst of all of that, I was rocking out to whatever was on the radio one day and a song that I had probably heard before, but not paid much attention to came on. It was “How Did You Love” by Shinedown.
The part that really hit me was the chorus, it goes like this:
“No one gets out alive, every day is do or die The one thing you leave behind Is how did you love, how did you love? It’s not what you believe those prayers will make you bleed But while you’re on your knees How did you love, how did you love, how did you love?“
Every one of us will die one day and how will people remember us? Will they remember us as someone that they looked up to, someone who was always there for them, someone who was willing to fix the mistakes we make, someone who loves? Or are they going to remember us for being a liar, tearing others down, being a person that they want nothing to do with?
When the case went to court, the person who sued me lost. About a week later they died by suicide. Unfortunately when I think about them, I don’t remember how they loved. I remember their intimidation tactics first. How they bullied my friends and I to try to change our truth to fit their narrative.
I have a good friend that I am lucky to have in my life who says, “If they wanted me to tell a different story, they should have given me a different story to tell.” (Sorry if I butchered your quote, Daisy.)
All of that to say this: I want to be a person who is known for loving others and myself. When my life is over, I want people to look back at me and the part my life played in theirs and be glad I was a part of their story. I want them to say that I loved well.
I know I’m not perfect, I’m human after all. I will make mistakes, my hope is that when I realize my mistakes either on my own, through therapy, or people pointing them out to me in a loving way, that I will be able to see them for what they are, and if necessary, make some changes.
I also know that moving forward in life, it’s alright to let people know if they’ve wronged me as well, as long as I do it in a way that lets them know how what they did affected me. For example I might say, “I feel violated when people invade by privacy by snooping around my in my journal.” It’s okay to call people out on what they’ve done wrong if it’s going to protect or help others. I mean, even Jesus got angry in the synagogue and flipped tables over and told those people what they were doing wrong.
Essentially, here’s what I learned from that experience and that song; what is important in life is how did you love? I want to be remembered for being a loving, caring, accepting person, who does whatever it takes to protect others. Will I make mistakes along the way? ABSOLUTELY! After all, I’m only human. I hope to learn from those mistakes and love better, become more caring, and more accepting.
Most importantly, what I’ve learned is that I am a valuable, lovable human being who deserves to be treated with respect, kindness, and value. As Keala Settle sings, “There’s nothing I’m not worthy of.”
Four years ago I released my very first book, Worthless No More. I began writing it the year before after a particularly difficult few months for me where I had been feeling especially worthless and making some bad choices for myself.
In writing the book, and with counseling, I began to see the reasons for why I felt so worthless. I saw the patterns of relationships throughout my childhood, teen years and young adult life that contributed to me feeling that way, but at some point it was no longer the people in my life making me feel worthless, I had internalized the feeling.
I believed that I was worthless.
Writing the book helped me see that and set me on a course of healing and realizing my own value as a person and a child of God. It’s been difficult, but well worth it.
When the book was finally published and I had copies in my hand, I had a book release celebration. For the celebration I found as many songs as I could that had to do with knowing your value and persevering through difficult times. The first song on the playlist that night was Fight Song by Rachel Platten. The first time I heard that song it spoke to me and reminded me of the inner strength I have. Here are the lyrics:
Like a small boat On the ocean Sending big waves Into motion Like how a single word Can make a heart open I might only have one match But I can make an explosion
And all those things I didn’t say Wrecking balls inside my brain I will scream them loud tonight Can you hear my voice this time?
This is my fight song Take back my life song Prove I’m alright song My power’s turned on Starting right now I’ll be strong I’ll play my fight song And I don’t really care if nobody else believes ‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me
Losing friends and I’m chasing sleep Everybody’s worried about me In too deep Say I’m in too deep (in too deep) And it’s been two years I miss my home But there’s a fire burning in my bones Still believe Yeah, I still believe
And all those things I didn’t say Wrecking balls inside my brain I will scream them loud tonight Can you hear my voice this time?
This is my fight song Take back my life song Prove I’m alright song My power’s turned on Starting right now I’ll be strong I’ll play my fight song And I don’t really care if nobody else believes ‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me A lot of fight left in me
Like a small boat On the ocean Sending big waves Into motion Like how a single word Can make a heart open I might only have one match But I can make an explosion
This is my fight song Take back my life song Prove I’m alright song My power’s turned on Starting right now I’ll be strong (I’ll be strong) I’ll play my fight song And I don’t really care if nobody else believes ‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me
I haven’t written a blog post since February, there are many reasons for that and someday, I may fill you in completely, but for now, I will let you know one of the reasons… my Mental Health.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I began this blog in May 2016 as a place for me to discuss mental health and sexual assault issues. This blog has been a life saver to me as I wrote about my own struggles with mental health issues in hopes of helping others with theirs, especially during the times when I felt completely alone as though nobody was listening.
This past year has been a struggle with my anxiety often being in overdrive and leading me to question my very existence. There were weeks where getting out of bed in the morning was a herculean effort, just to do the things required of living was exhausting, never mind keeping two other humans alive as well.
I realized that my mental health needed attention and sought help in the form of a Christian counselor. I do my best to keep the fact that I follow Christ out of what I write on here, but this year that has been part of what has saved me so in this blog, I’m going to include it.
I wanted to find a counselor who understood mental health issues like anxiety, and also understood my belief in God and how strongly I hold onto Jesus in the deepest, darkest of times in my life. It has helped tremendously!
I know I will always have anxiety, it’s just a part of who I am. Most of the time it’s my superpower, but sometimes it’s my unraveling, as it tried to be this past year. Talking with someone who understands anxiety and lots of prayer helped me pull out of the deep trenches of anxiety and back into the land of the living.
Recently, a Christian told me that because of my anxiety, I live in fear. Because I’m living in fear, I’m not a good Christian and I’m allowing the devil to have a stronghold in my life.
This person has not talked with me about what I’ve done to combat my anxiety and fears. They have not asked to pray with me about my anxiety. They have not asked what they can do to ease my anxiety. They haven’t asked if my anxiety is better or worse.
They just decided that because I have anxiety, I am allowing the devil a place in my life and I need to get my life right with God and back on track. When I do that, then everything will be better.
This person has no idea the work that I have done with my counselor and with God this year to get better. I am better for the time being. I know that a bad bout with anxiety will come again, that’s the nature of the illness. It pretends to be my friend for a while, then BAM, it turns on me.
This person telling me that I just need to get right with God reminded me of this cartoon:
If we treated physical illnesses the same way we treat mental illnesses.
Mental illnesses are real! They are no more about the devil taking over a person’s life than any physical illness is.
Would somebody ever tell a person with cancer that they just need to pray more, or that they just don’t believe in God enough to be healed, or that they must be allowing the devil to have a stronghold in their life because they aren’t getting better.
Unfortunately, there are Christians who believe these lies about physical and mental health. Well I don’t.
We live in an imperfect world and I am an imperfect human. That means I have flaws and illness and I make mistakes and I have heartbreaks.
It also means that I am worthy of love.
Period.
No, “You are worthy of love; if you do this…”
I am worthy of love because I am me. That’s it. Whether you approve of who and how I am and the illness I have or the mistakes I make. I am worthy of love.
I have value because I am a human being.
I will not be ashamed of my mental illness.
“But you’re not ashamed?” “I trust GOD with all my heart. He hasn’t taken my anxiety and depression away yet…but he has taken my shame.”
As 2020 comes to an end, I’ve been looking back on the year, specifically the past nine months. These have been extremely difficult for so many people to say the least. As a meme that’s been going around the internet says, “We are not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm. Some have yachts, some canoes, and some are drowning. Just be kind and help whoever you can.”
This year has brought old as well as new struggles with my mental health. There were days that the thought of getting out of bed was too much, the effort it takes to live was too much. The difference this time is that I know that I’m valuable, I have worth and that made the struggle doable, it was like a life preserver.
I learned from a lot of people throughout my young life that I wasn’t valuable, that I was just a waste of space and time. My family let me know, adults and students at my school let me know, the people at my church let know and society let me know; I was worthless.
People didn’t seem to care about my feelings, they just dismissed my fears and anxieties as being over dramatic or just shy or just too much.
My mom used to take us to this park in our town that you had to drive on a levee road to get to. I was terrified that we would go off the road into the water, be trapped in the car and drown. So terrified that I would have nightmares about drowning the night before we would go to the park, waking up in tears. She dismissed it by saying that it would never happen. I learned as an adult, we could have gotten to the park without ever driving on the levy road. This fear of drowning by going off the road into the water got so bad, that I hated going over bridges, my mom continued to tell me that my fear was irrational and that bridges wouldn’t break, and cars wouldn’t go over the edges until the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake where the San Francisco Bay Bridge broke and reinforced my fears of falling off levy roads and bridges, being trapped in the water in the car and drowning. It took months of specific therapy to get over just that fear to where now I can drive on levy roads and over bridges with only minimal fear and no panic attacks.
By her dismissing my fears, she reinforced the fact that I was not important, that my feelings were not important.
My dad was rarely home when we were with him, when he was home, he was busy working in the garage or watching television. We weren’t allowed in the garage; we could stand in the door to ask him a question and he made it obvious that we were interrupting his rebuilding of whatever car or motorcycle he was currently working on. If he was watching TV, we had to wait for a commercial to talk to him. Everything else was more important to him than we were.
Whatever I was, I wasn’t enough for my parents.
When I started Kindergarten, two things stood out to me that first week that showed me that the adults didn’t think I was smart enough. First, I went to school knowing how to spell my name; M-I-S-H-E-L-L. An adult helper thought she needed to inform me that I spelled my name wrong. I just remember feeling helpless and lost. I knew how to spell my name, but an adult was telling me I was wrong, so she must be right. Another adult told me that I was wrong when I said that my sister was starting high school. She absolutely was starting high school, she’s nine years older than me. I learned not to let teachers or even students know how smart I was. I needed to go along to get along. To be just smart enough, but not too smart.
Church was another place that I learned the lesson that who I was wasn’t good enough and that I had to keep who I really was hidden to be accepted. My very first Sunday wasn’t like that. I went to Children’s Church and there was a very large, extremely loud, bearded man in the front of the crowded room trying to get the kids to quiet down. I burst into tears because I was separated from my sister. He stopped what he was doing, came over to me, and helped me. He calmed me down and got me and my sister seats together. He paid attention to me, he didn’t dismiss me or belittle me, he helped me.
Then I got involved in the girls’ group at the church. In that group I learned that we are all sinners. One of the first Bible verses I had to memorize was Isaiah 53:6, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Another one was Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” It was verse after verse about what a sinner I was. What a horrible person I was. How I wasn’t good enough.
Luckily, that loud, Children’s Pastor had a discipleship group, and I was in it. In that group I learned about God’s love for me from verses like John 3:16; “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, that whoever believes in him shall have eternal life.” And Ephesians 1:4, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.”
So, while I may not have been good enough for my family, or my teachers and others at school, or most of the people at church, I was good enough for Pastor Tim and God.
Unfortunately, I never believed I was good enough for any person. I always believed that I had to prove my worth to others, that they wouldn’t accept me for who I was, but then I wrote a book which I titled Worthless No More, and I realized that I am a valuable human being. I don’t need to keep any part of me hidden from others for them to accept me, if they don’t accept me, that’s their problem, not mine.
It hasn’t been easy, especially considering this last election because for some reason Christianity seems to be deeply tied into Republicanism. My Christian friends are where it’s the most difficult because I don’t like Trump. I’ve never liked Trump, since before he was President. I’ve had people question my Christianity because of it. Christians have called me a socialist, libtard because I believe that we should have accessible health care. Christians have called me a sheep because I believe we should wear masks to keep others healthy.
However, looking forward to 2021, I will no longer go along to get along. I will be me. I am valuable for who I am. I am Worthless No More.
I haven’t written much recently, but with what I have written, you know that I am broken, depressed, anxious, and generally not in a good place.
To help combat that I have been seeing a licensed therapist to gain insights and strategies to help navigate this cruel, cold, divided world we live in that is being ravaged by a disease that’s wreaking havoc on people’s physical and mental health.
I also just finished teaching a unit on stress and how to better manage stress in our lives. Between the two, therapy and teaching, one strategy stood out, being thankful, or showing gratitude.
I’m not talking about toxic positivity, the idea that if you think positive thoughts all the bad stuff will go away and you’ll feel all better, depression will magically disappear and your thoughts will suddenly slow down.
I’m talking about taking a few minutes each day in the midst of the turmoil and chaos that is life at the moment (because it is a moment, no matter how long it lasts, it will pass) and seeing the good things that are still there. We may have to squint our eyes and look really hard, maybe even pull out a magnifying glass or a microscope, but they’re there; those positive things that give us hope in humanity, that make life worth living, that make it that much easier to get out of bed the next day.
When my therapist first suggested the idea to write down five things each day I thought it was a dumb idea. I didn’t see how it could help, I knew it wasn’t going to make everything magically get better, but I did it anyway. For about three weeks now, I have been faithfully making a daily list of five things I’m thankful for.
I was right, the world hasn’t changed, my life is still in turmoil, I still feel broken, but it has made it a little easier to get out of bed each day. It has given me a challenge to look forward to as I try to find a few good things everyday, and I love a challenge.
Here are some of the things I’m thankful for (in no particular order)
My kids because they made me a mom and showed me what it is to love someone so much that you can’t imagine life without them and how bad it hurts to see them hurting, and how amazing feels to see them happy and successful and being who they want to be.
My job because it allows me to be immersed in my favorite subject and to be with my friends on a daily basis (pre-COVID; now it’s more on a weekly basis) and my co-workers are some of my best friends.
My friends because they are there when I need people to talk to, to have fun with, etc.
Food, because I love food, especially homemade food that I get to feed to my family at dinnertime all together talking about our day.
My family, the ones that are by blood and the married in ones, because we are there for each other no matter what and help each other out.
My students because I know that distance learning isn’t easy for most of them, but they show up on their computers every day and listen to me, then they go off and do the assignments I give them. They tell me things about their lives and struggles with school in emails, they ask for help, they’re doing their absolute best in this weird new world we live in and it gives me hope for the future that we have such a resilient group of young people who will go out into the world in a few years.
Jesus because without him in my life, I wouldn’t have any peace.
This idea of giving thanks in the turmoil is actually biblical. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 it says to “give thanks in all circumstances: for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Sometimes I think people mistake this to mean that Christians have to be thankful for our circumstances, but that’s not what the verse is saying at all, it says IN all circumstances.
That means, looking for the little things that make the living in those circumstances just a little bit easier. Seeing the things that make getting out of bed worth it every day.
Some days I do have to pull out a magnifying glass to find what I’m thankful for, but I still find at least five things every day to be thankful for, it hasn’t changed the chaos in the world, the division in the nation or the turmoil I feel in my life, but it has made getting out of bed each day easier.
Last weekend I finally told my husband what I’ve been afraid to tell anybody, but since it’s Suicide Prevention Month, I decided to be honest.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
I’m actually feeling much better now, that I put it out there to another human being and not just keeping it in my head and it was much worse back in July when I wrote the blog titled, “Broken Nation, Broken Me.” Back then it was so bad that I thought everyday what life would be like for those I left behind, now it’s maybe once every couple of weeks.
I don’t have a plan, I’m actually scared of the thought of going through with it, and I would never willingly leave my children without a mother, but somedays it is extremely difficult to get out of bed and do all the things required of living.
Now, with that out of the way, let me explain why.
I’m hypersensitive. Many people don’t know that about me because I learned at a young age that showing emotion caused me to be called weak. If I cried over something my dad would ask, “Do you want me to give you something to cry about?” usually reaching for the stick he used to beat us with. The “stick” was a piece of wooden baseboard about 3 feet long that he kept on top of the refrigerator. I learned rather quickly to not show when I was upset by something and just bury my emotions.
That was probably the beginning of my anxiety and depression issues, but that’s not what this post is about.
Every four years our nation goes through a presidential election cycle and of course people choose sides. I was raised by my mom in an uber-conservative Christian church, part of the “Moral Majority” led by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Baker. While my mom was a registered Democrat because of John F. Kennedy, she completely agreed with everything the Moral Majority preached and pretty much always voted Republican as far as I knew. She and my Grandma loved Ronald Reagan and everything he stood for and voted for George Bush when he ran because he would follow in Reagan’s footsteps.
I say all that to say that I was raised in a religion that attempted to teach me that if I was a true Christian I would always vote Republican because they were the party that supported life. The Democrats were the evil ones who supported killing babies. I was even taught that some Christians weren’t Christian enough if they were Democrats, because Democrats were so evil.
So every four years, I see our nation divided between those who vote Republican and those who vote Democrat, however this year seems to be the absolute worst!
If someone criticizes anything that the Republicans or Trump has said or done they are automatically labelled a “libtard,” a “sheep,” a “bleeding heart liberal” or many other not so nice names. If a person criticizes Biden or the Democrats they are “haters,” “Trumpkins, ” or “racists.”
In my lifetime, I have never seen our country so divided. I teach history, so I know that it has been this divided in the past, I mean we had a Civil War, talk about division! However, I wasn’t alive for that, so it didn’t affect my mental health.
The election isn’t the only thing people are divided on. People are divided on race issues, whether or not there is systemic racism in this country (there is).
Whether or not we should wear masks.
Whether or not hair and nail salons should be open as well as other businesses.
Whether or not COVID-19 is real.
Whether or not schools should open and if teachers are actually working when they do virtual school. (This one really hurts me mentally and emotionally because I am working my behind off to be there for my students and teach them and answer their questions any time of the night or day. I mean, I am getting emails from them at midnight and one o’clock in the morning sometimes.)
All this division is wreaking havoc on my mental health as well as on our nation.
On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted Matthew 12:25 in his “House Divided” speech when he said that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Matthew 12:25 actually says that, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” New King James Version.
This amazing, great nation that we call the United States of America is not very united right now. It is extraordinarily divided right now.
This division is breaking me. I speak about something and I’m attacked by one side or the other. Just seeing the division is disheartening and making me not want to be a part of this life.
When I have spoken how disheartening this is for me, I hear amazing platitudes like, “God is in control.” or “Give it to God.” or, “It’s just the devil trying to get you down, you need to rebuke him.”
I’m tired of Christian platitudes.
I want to see Christians begin to live by the example that Jesus taught. To love your neighbor as yourself. When they asked who was our neighbor, Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan where a priest saw a person who needed help and he walked by on the other side of the road, then a Levite saw the man and he also walked by on the other side of the road. When the Samaritan saw the man who needed help (Samaritans were looked down on by Jews in that time) he helped the man, took him to an inn and paid to have the innkeeper look after him. (Paraphrased from Luke 10:25-37)
Instead of Us vs. Them how about we begin to look at it as we. We need to get along. We need to survive this life. We need to help each other. We need to understand and support one another. We don’t always have to agree with everyone in order to love them.
Love is a choice and it seems the United States of America have become the Divided States of Hate and my mental health is deteriorating in this nation as well as the mental health of many of my fellow Americans.
Instead of demonizing “them,” maybe we can begin to work to understand where they are coming from.
Instead of demonizing “them,” maybe we can listen to what they have to say instead of what “Us” says “they” want, believe, are going to do etc.
I find myself retreating further and further into my shell to get away from the division in this country, in this state and in my city. There are still days I don’t want this life.
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