Remnice

I had a lovely weekend camping at this really beautiful spot to which I will keep the name a secret because I want to think of it as my own special spot. Lets just say it´s a fairyland spot, with a little pond/lake kind of thing and with lovely trees to climb. The perfect place to sit, read, think and knit(my latest acquired hobby).
Since reading is the one thing that makes me most happy I read for quite a long time while I was there, I finished The Shack which I was reading for the second time and I started the book Eat,Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I love it!
I mean the more I read of it the more I want to read and like The Shack it is the kind of book you wish would not ever end. I found out that we have a lot of common and that some of the ways I have felt in my lifetime, someone else has felt exactly the same.
Some things are hard to think about or talk about and I think she does an awesome job at letting you experience her own feelings through her words and not everyone can write like that. When she talked about depression and how desperate she felt at a time in her life I saw me on that bathroom floor, I saw myself in every description of herself and that gave me the goosebumps. What I am about to write is not easy to talk about at all, but this trip has been a cure of my soul, and after reading about these lady´s feelings I want to write mine too, as if every line that I write a little bit of my pain, sadness or anger will be released and maybe, just maybe it will help someone else feeling that way too.
Right before I came to Tanzania I felt so depressed. I had never felt that way, I am a happy person by nature, a joyful person. Sometimes like every normal human being I feel sad, but at those times I would just allow myself one big cry and then go back to my normal happy self.Until I just did not feel happy anymore. I had a great job at the mall that allowed me to teach in the afternoons and tutor in the evenings, I was making some great money, I had just gotten a new computer and I was having a jolly time. Like I have said before teaching is my passion and I love it with all my heart, my students always had a way of lifting my spirits and challenging me. That was until I got really sick. To this day I have no idea what it is that I have, doctors have a way of using hard words to describe stuff and just confuse the heck out of you, so far I know I am not dying, so I guess that´s good:) All I know is I spent a whole month going in and out of the hospital with a very acute anemia, taking blood transfusions and being poked and tested all the time. Let us just say I was not the happiest person, I was stressed all the time and kind of mad at the world and God for being in this sticky situation.The only thing that ever made me happy was teaching, many a time I did not go to my job at the mall, but for example the day after my 8hr, 2 blood transfusions and an IV, expedition at the hospital I got my butt out of bed and went to school to teach. My life was a mess,and so was I. Through this whole process I also ended a 7 month relationship and fell helplessly in love(or so I thought) with someone who loved one of my friends. I won´t go deep into that simply because it involves third parties, but lets just imagine a cup that you are filling with water and it suddenly overflows that was me an overflowing cup that just kept on overflowing and making a mess out of things. I don´t think I ever felt so hopeless and so sad in my life, not even when my mom passed away did I ever lose grip on anything, but this time was different, all the anger, sadness and darkness of the past just caught up with me and it was not just going to leave me that easy. On one of my trips to the hospital I just shared with my doctor how I felt, and let us say that was one interesting conversation, sometimes the most improbable people will relate to you in the strangest ways. In my doctors mind, thinking it would help me, the best thing would be to give me a prescription of sedatives and anti-depressants. Bad idea!
I wanted to feel happy again so desperately and I was seeing no difference in the first week I started taking 2 pills of the anti-depressants and I will not even get started on the sedatives, it is a scary place to be, a dark, scary, cold place to be. If you ask me anything about that month I would´t be able to tell you, my life for a month is made of flashbacks and occasional memories. I just was not happy, I spent my days lingering around, crying, going to work at the mall and crying, good thing school was closed for Christmas break, because my life was about crying and wanting to disappear and at the moment I could not even look forward to teaching. I just did not want to be me, I did not want to be around people and I did not want to deal with anything, my mind and soul were filled with these dark ideas and thoughts haunting me and to top it all I felt terribly guilty to to feel this way. In my mind no one who has what I have, who feels like I feel most days, should ever feel the way I was feeling and at that time I sure felt like there was no place I could run to, because the world is a busy place, filled with busy people, and happy people who have not to take up with anyone´s crap no matter how friends you are. That was how terribly out of it I was, that I could not run to my friends or family for comfort because I did not think I was entitled to feel comforted, for all I knew and cared for I deserved every bad feeling, or numbness, or dark thought I was getting. I was very close to the point of no return, like you are near that cliff and you know you only have to jump. Fortunately for me I have great friends, that saw me falling apart every day and came to my rescue. I did not appreciate being rescued, I was ok with throwing a self pity party everyday, being all drugged up and crying most days, so the thought of being rescued just made me laugh, the sarcastic kind of inside laugh. Bitterness becomes a good buddy when you are out in the slums all by yourself. I fought with my friends and said terrible things to them, which in return just made me feel even more deserving of what I was getting, but while on the phone with one of my very, very good friends, whom has never left me in any situation and has always been there for me, he hung up the phone on my face, I just realized how terrible, how horrible I was being, it hit me like a rock, literally it was as if someone had just slapped me and I had woken up from a very bad dream. I looked at myself in the mirror and what I saw made me sad, I did´t feel pretty, or sweet, or nice, like my friends usually described me, I especially did not feel worthy of being loved by any of them anymore. So I did the only possible thing that I thought could in some way redeem me, I threw all my medication away, every little pill I owned I threw away and I cried, and cried and cried until I could not cry anymore, until my soul was tired of crying, until I felt redeemed in my own eyes and I prayed, I prayed as hard as I could to the Mr.God I have always loved that he would make me strong not to go right back to the pharmacy and get a new batch of numbing medication. I don´t remember ever praying so hard about anything, all I could think was if I didn´t get better pretty soon I would not have my friends and that was just too much to bear. My biggest fears have been of not being loved anymore by the most important people in my life, of disappointing them, of not being what they expect me to be(even if those expectations, like my dad once said, are just in my head, or are my own expectations that I reflect on other people). What can I say I am really messed up:P
For two days my whole world was a very difficult place, no medication,reality hitting me like a rock, and feeling every kind of emotion possible, I really wanted to die during those two days again I prayed like there would not be a tomorrow, because I felt like all I wanted to do was be numb again. Every single upsetting thought I could possibly have, I had and if you ask me where did I find my strength I have no answer for you that would be acceptable to you, I guess it would be different for everyone.
After that I tried to slowly go back to my normal life,hahaha, as if it could ever be normal again.I still cried and was sad, and reality, man it sucks, it just punches you all the time, but I just had to deal with it one day at the time, baby steps, lol.
I got to come to Tanzania to figure myself out, to rest, and to put my life into perspective, and man it did, my perspective has changed in so many things. Don´t get me wrong, I still fear my best friend doesn´t love me anymore or cares for or is mad at me if she doesn´t write to me, or acts funny on the phone, I still freak out I will disappoint my 2 dads(my real dad and the man I consider my dad), I still get so terribly sad at times I feel like I want to disappear, but at those times I just concenrate really hard on all the good things in my life, I make a thank you list of all the things I am thankful of, I sing happy songs on the radio, I go and have a caramel macchiatto at Starbucks, or I just go for a run, and while it might not completely make me the merriest person on this earth it avoids my soul from crawling into those dark places. I don´t know why this happens to me,am I proud of this part of my life? Not really. Did I want the world to know? Nope...but why not????? If by any way this yucky part of my life could make someone realize that someone else has been there and done that and came out of it alive, why not? I always feel like I am not the best person for this, or that, or even to be in ministry because I feel like the most messed up person in the world, but I think about the most important people in my life who have helped me, shaped me and been there for me and they also didn´t have everything figured out either, or sometimes if it seemed they had at least they could say I have been there and this is how I got out of it.Maybe just because I have been there I will be able to help people who are there. It is a learning process and I am so not done with it yet, but at least I am not totally overwhelmed by it either.
Am I scared of going back home? Yes, very much so.I am so scared that by some chance I might feel like I did before, and that alone freaks me out, but I also realize that the power over that decision is in my hands. I have the power to take that and turn into good or turn into bad. I am choosing to turn into good, if I will or not is yet a time to come, but at least I released my deep dark secret, and that feels good.I have a whole WWW to keep me accountable. At least now, this "secret" has no more power over my mind, body and soul, because I am not trying to hide it away anymore. Like I said, decision, it is all about decision and trust. It is also about letting go, and I just did.
I will keep you all posted.
Much love
Me