God is my strength and my hope

I slowly opened my eyes to warmly greet consciousness after nine hours of deep sleep. It was 6 am. I looked around my bedroom into which light was beginning to pour. I was alone in my bedroom. I picked up my cellphone and checked whether anyone had called. No one. No one cares about you. That’s why friends don’t get in touch. Just end it.

I managed to brush that thought aside. It was a Saturday morning. I felt bored. What would I do today? My mind started pulling up possible activities I could engage in on this Saturday. I shook my head. It was not worth it. I felt like just staying in bed.

Another day on which I have to do all that personal hygiene stuff. Why do we even have to brush? I managed to heave myself out of bed. I felt so tired, as though I had just finished playing a soccer match that lasted 120 minutes.

While I brushed I thought of friends I’d not heard from in months and while I bathed I ruminated over mistakes I’d made which had caused the disease that confined me to the house.

I am worthless. I am hopeless. There seems to be only one way out—suicide.

***

Back in my bedroom, recurring suicide ideas run incessantly through my mind. I held my head and shook it.

Am I going crazy? No!

I had to distract myself somehow. I switched on the television and searched for my favorite station. They were showing the replay of a soccer game. I loved soccer. I was uninterested this morning, as I’d been for some months now. I was losing my love for soccer.

I’m so lonely? Life is not worth living. Why don’t I end it? No one cares about me!

***

This is the kind of life I have been living for the past ten years. I have clinical depression. Each day brings its soup of symptoms, ranging from inconvenient symptoms such as the inability to get enough sleep at night, diminished ability to focus on work, to downright intolerable symptoms such as feelings of hopelessness, thoughts of death and fear of dying.

Up until this “monster” decided to eat me up, I was a healthy, happy guy full of hope and optimism. As a freelance writer and blogger, I spent my days writing blog posts, creating short stories, doing freelance writing assignments, then relieving stress by playing with my rabbits, walking briskly up and down in the yard of our house, listening to soothing, inspirational music on my radio or interacting with friends and strangers on social media. As an avid reader, I spent many hours reading story books, romance books, humor books, and any kind of book I could lay my hands on. I regularly visited friends and interacted with them.

But since my diagnosis in 2009, I spend almost every waking hour all alone in my room either researching to write articles or reading so that I can produce stories. When it became clear that I had depression and would need social support to help me endure my disease, I expected some of my generous, in some cases lifelong friends, to support me and encourage me, to phone once in a while or at least send encouraging text messages occasionally.

To my mind, these expectations were logical. Before I suffered from depression, I had very supportive, compassionate friends like my pal who would come home and chat with me to help alleviate my loneliness, and another friend who sent text messages and called once in a while to check out how I was faring.

I thought this kind of support would continue, especially now when I need companionship and a caring ear to listen to my fears and worries, and a caring mouth to speak encouragement and motivation into my soul. Instead, the opposite has been true for some months now: As time has progressed, friends who used to care about me and some whom I have helped in the past have forgotten about me. They rarely call. I have not received any text message from a friend in about five years now. I asked for favors from some friends, but they are too busy enjoying their happy, active, productive lives to spare any time for a poor miserable soul such as me or to check up on me.

I am not sharing this information because I want anyone to pity me. Since the depression started, I have relied entirely on myself, my very supportive mother, and my God. I have discovered that I have lots of reserves of inner strength that I never knew existed. And once I realized that when you get into trouble you retain few friends, if any at all, I have depended on the support of my mother and my God.

I am sharing my story because I know there are many people out there who also have depression and who feel as lonely as I feel. There is an expression that goes, “When you get depressed, friends and relatives can turn into strangers. So look to make new friends and look to God to help sustain you.” For me, the first part of this expression proved true early on. As my depression continued and I became increasingly unable to socialize with my friends, they stopped communicating, and eventually stopped reaching out to me. They have stopped visiting. They have stopped calling. They have stopped texting. They do not reach out to me on social media.

After the initial shock of having lost access to what had been a source of strength and support in my life, I started to contemplate what had happened. After deep reflection, I understood things better. I think some of these friends still think about me, care about me, and pray for me. While I do believe my now-distant friends still care about me, I think they don’t know how to respond to my changed situation. My friends were used to this happy, hopeful, friendly, communicative guy and they are now faced with a sad, person who doesn’t seem to be improving.

In most cases of illness, the patient gets symptoms, seeks treatment at a hospital, and begins to recover. But in my case, which has many types of treatment but can take years to treat, healing can often be a process that involves drugs, support of empathetic people, the help of God, interaction with pets etc., and this can take years sometimes.

I empathize with my friends. They were always getting the answer, “t’s still the same,” or “Things are even worse now than they used to be,” when they asked me how I felt and I guess they just didn’t know what else they could say to encourage me.

Furthermore, many people do not understand depression. Many people think when you have depression it means “you are just feeling sad” or “having the blues” or “having a bad day in the office” or “you are about to go crazy” or “you are crazy”. The average person who does not have depression just doesn’t understand what the patient suffers on a daily basis.

As for the second part of the saying about depression—that so look to make new friends—I have connected with some people I didn’t know prior to my disease, on Facebook and Twitter. These people help remind me that I need to reach out and connect, even if online, to help me feel better. That helps me to get out of my head and stop ruminating about my loneliness.

With regard to God, I remind myself often of Psalms 27: 10 which reads, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me up.” Even if friends have forsaken me, the Omniscient Father, who knows the mental suffering I’m going through, who knows every thought that comes to my mind, who knows the terrible feelings I endure each day, and who is a Friend to the friendless, is with me. That is enough.

And I remember the words Jesus spoke to His disciples in the upper room, “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me (John 16: 32). It may seem as though I’m alone, but I’m not alone because the Omnipresent Jehovah is with me all the time. God is my rock. God is my hope. God is my strength. He is a true friend who sticks closer than a brother. That gives me comfort. Without God’s grace and mercies, I’d be adrift.

Your Takeaway

This is my story. I’m still alive and fighting.

Why have I shared my story? It’s because I know there are many people battling depression like I am out there. In fact, according to the WHO, globally, more than 264 million people of all ages suffer from depression.

If you are suffering from depression and feel sad, lonely, and rejected and you feel no one cares about you, remember God cares about you. He is just a prayer away. All you need to do is call Him through prayer and He will love you and be there for you.

And you may be having suicidal thoughts. Whether you are a teenager who feels all alone in the world, a college student who feels very lonely, a stressed-out worker who feels like ending it or a spouse who feels neglected and so is considering suicide, I want to convince you of one incontrovertible point:

DON’T GIVE IN TO THOSE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS! YOU ARE NOT ALONE! THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT YOU AND WHO CAN HELP YOU!

Because listen … I know how you feel. If I have been able to cope with depression and loneliness for ten years, then what can you accomplish if you set your mind to it and adopt the right attitude.

Pretty much anything.

No. It’s not easy. At some point, I guarantee you’ll want to give up.

But never stop believing that there is hope for tomorrow, although you may feel as though you have come to the end of the road.

The negative thoughts will try to give you a distorted vision of reality, but the worst thing you can do is give in to them. You must silence them, live and do great things.

THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU SO REACH OUT FOR HELP TODAY!