I'm a runner. Except my legs never move. It's only my heart that flees.

It's three o'clock and I haven't heard from you once. I don't know if I'm surprised or or not. It's funny to me, and embarassing, how secure the the three o'clock hello made be feel. Eventually the three o'clock hello became the one o'clock "Hello, I'm bored." Then the one o'clock "Hello, I'm bored," became the ten am "Hello, what should I eat for lunch?" Then the ten am "Hello, what should I eat for lunch?" became the eight-thirty "Hello, did you get to work on time?" By then we shared so many hellos that the time between the good nights and the good mornings was the only time we weren't waving words at each other.

And now I am lonely.

No matter what, the smell of rubbing alcohol reminds me of being in my pediatrician's office, four years old, waiting for whatever would happen when Dr. Pete came in the room. Usually, he would bustle in, speaking loundly, and always asking me the same question. "You married yet?" To which my response was always a shy wriggle off of the exam table and into my mother's lap.

Again he would ask, "Well if you're not married, do you have a boyfriend?" All the while in my child's brain I wondered why for goodness sake he was asking me this sort of question. The voice inside my head that was never loud enough for anyone else to hear would say "Of course I'm not married, you fool, I'm four years old, what kind of question is that anyway? And why are you so concerned about it?" Even as a small child, that question made me feel very strange.

Then he would make me stick out my tongue and do that awkward thing where you lay on the table and the doctor presses on your organs until you can't breathe and then I would leave his office with a prescription for amoxocillian, the best and most effective medication of all time.

I prayed that you would cut your hair so that I would stop wanting to look at you so much. The next day you cut your hair. I guess God does answer some prayers. I still want to look at you all the time though.

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more that watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

**************

I drew back the living room curtain, to let the evening light in, and thought to myself “It’s like a depressed person lives here.” I cleaned to keep from crying, then I sat on the porch drinking a beer, counting the cars until he ran to me, and when he did, I was so confused that he was running.

*************

The morning light greeted my eyes already full of tears. I thought I had reached the end. I would be spending the day entirely alone, and was so very afraid.

I sat in the red chair and looked at the book on the table, trying to convince myself to open it while my coffee was brewing. I didn’t want to have to tell those girls again that I didn’t believe God loved me anymore, and that I wanted very little to do with Him. And what I wanted even less was to endure their encouraging and genuine responses about God’s love and faithfulness even in the hardest of times. So I opened it, halfway out of spite and halfway out of fear. The last words I’d read sent me reeling to the arms of the one whose heart ticks like a clock, and convinced me that there was no where I was safe from pain.

I read Psalm 130.
Once.
Twice.
Three and four more times.

I shut the book because I was actually angry at God for addressing me. If he stayed far away from me, and I could prove that he really did have it out for me, then I would be justified. But he didn’t. He crept right up from behind me and put into words the achings that had been pouring out of my eyes in the form of tears, so many tears that it seemed a little part of my soul went with each and every one until there was no soul left inside of me for God to revive and I would spend the rest of my days cold on the inside, quietly serving him until he took me home.

I sighed. I knew what I had to do. I ripped a page out of my journal, which is basically like cutting Samson’s hair. I wrote the Psalm out on that page, pausing when I wrote the word “Israel.” The name God chose for his hand-picked nation of people means “he who struggles with God.” In some way, that name has always given me hope, reassuring me that God knows how hard it is for us to actually believe in him, and that he doesn’t hate us when we don’t. I would rather fight with God for the rest of my life than blindly accept what someone tells me because they are a “stronger” Christian. And I think God’s okay with that, because I know that he made me, and that it is his hand that instilled that characteristic in me.

I read the Psalm out loud, my voice cracking and shaking, microcosmic parts of my soul spilling out from eyes. “O she who struggles with God, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.” I asked God to redeem me, to restore all the parts of my heart that I had given away, and the parts my heart I still possessed, but were so gnarled and scarred that I am afraid to show them to anyone. I thought about God’s promise in Joel, that he will restore the years that the locusts have stripped away.

Staring at my turquoise wall until they cones and rods in my eyes fired orange, I remembered the last time I felt the way I do now, spending everyday in my pajamas in a basement apartment in a town that reeked of death, and that every single day since I left that place, I have fought tooth and nail, to never, never go back.

But I am back. I am in that place again. I am the depressed person that lives in the house.

And it’s perfectly okay.

I always knew it would come back. For as much as I wanted to be one of those people who God has miraculously rescued from their days of mental illness, I’ve sort of always known that wouldn’t be my story. My diagnosis when I lived in that basement was “major depressive disorder, with personality change.” It’s some pretty heavy duty shit. I sort of always knew that I would fight this for the rest of my life, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to actually admit that I am legitimately depressed, because I was scared out of my mind, that even admitting that I was depressed again meant that I broken beyond repair.

I’m not writing this to elicit pity or sympathy, or because I think it’s cool to be sad.

I am writing this because now is the time when I have to fight. I’ve been fighting the wrong person for a while now, and when it clicked in my mind, that I am legitimately, clinically depressed, I felt free. I am not under God’s thumb, and God is not my enemy. My own brain is my enemy, which trust me, is a strange, strange realization.

Just like a cancer patient has to fight their own body, I have to fight my own mind. And just like a cancer patient needs lots of people around them who love them and will help them fight, I need that too.

In the end, this really is between me and God. But He is on my side, so I’m going to be okay. There’s a good chance I won’t always be myself, and I will probably do some really crazy things, and I don’t know how long it will take to get better, but I will.

When I was in the seventh grade, I loved a boy named Justin Schaewe. Being familiar with the English language, I’m guessing that you pronounced that “sha-way.” If you did, you would have been wrong. His last name was actually pronounced “sha-VAY.” Tricky, huh? He looked like Ponyboy, played by C. Thomas Howell, in the movie The Outsiders, and I loved him. He was a year older than me.
We had a class together, it was Spanish and I sat behind and to the left of him. Ms. Cervantes was our teacher. Every year she would dress up as an M&M for Halloween because she was short and fat and loved to eat M&Ms. She was married to one of the art teachers at our school, whom I always believed was gay. They had different last names and two dogs of the chow persuasion. I don’t think they really loved each other.
The girl who sat in front of me in Spanish class was named Jennifer. She looked like an eagle. A pretty blond eagle with perfect bangs who played volleyball. She was in my grade, and very, very popular. Justin Schaewe was popular too, he hung out with Mike and Nicole (if you went to Falcon Middle School in the years 1992-1995, you would get the reference). In our Spanish class, we picked out Spanish names to call each other during class. Jennifer picked the name Esperanza, which means hope. I picked the name Cristina, which means Christina, because that was the closest thing I could find to Kristen.
For a brief period of time, Jennifer and Justin Schaewe dated. This was a terrible period for me, because I knew that this meant that Justin Schaewe could not love me. We were not fated to be together. It was also terrible\y awkward because Jennifer and I were in the same grade and had other classes together and we were friends, in that way that a popular girl is friends with the smart fat girl who is good at maintaining a conversation, and listens to you when you talk about your boyfriend whom she secretly loves, but you would have know idea that she loves him, because to you she is so clearly out of his league. Duh.
Just when I was getting over the fact that Justin Schaewe could never love me, his grandfather died and he was not at school for a week. He had to travel somewhere to go the funeral, which was very exotic, because we lived in a small country town and I had only flown in an airplane once. I know all of that because Ms. Cervantes told our whole class. I think there are laws against that now.
Jennifer and Justin broke up eventually, Spanish class ended and we all moved on with our lives. Since Justin was a year older than us he continued his education at Falcon High School. (I am also a proud alumni of Falcon Elementary School. I told you it was a small rural town). Later, I transitioned from Falcon High School to Sand Creek High School, the other, brand new, high school in our district. Most of the kids at that school were the city kids who were bussed out to Falcon High School, and had gone to Horizon Middle School, our rival. But there were a handful of the country kids like me, who opted to attend Sand Creek because of its promising future and because it was a school that didn’t allow students to hitch their horses to the front of the building while they were in class.
One of those was Justin Shaewe. Finally we had a special bond that was shared with only a handful of other students at Sand Creek: we were the country kids. By no means did this make us friends. He continued to be popular, and I continued to be smart and fat. He wore ski goggles on the side of his head, even in the warmest weather and I wore long-sleeved cardigans purchased from Goodwill. Our taste in fashion may have been different, but he and I shared the bond of having known each other through elementary and middle school, and when he nodded casually to me as we passed in the hallway I knew it was because he was remembering the time when I sat behind and to the left of him in Ms. Cervantes Spanish class, and not at all because his silly orange goggles were slipping down the side of his face.