Gary. Explained in a letter to a friend

Thank you so much for your encouragement, love, and even for the simple blessing of writing that wonderful letter in all those lovely bright colours. I confess that where I'm currently at has made me a little colour-blind. I still see hope, I still know it's there, but my world feels just a shade dimmer at a time when all I want is to be able to thrive in the brightness and joy and hope that I know is there. I won't write too much about the negative stuff I'm feeling, because I find describing it too much seems to open the door to those feelings, and for the moment I've successfully shoved them out on the back porch to shiver and be miserable without me. My anxiety issues are there still, but worse than the anxiety is this... shadow. I'll name it Gary so that I feel less threatened by it, since Gary is a silly name and invokes a lot more lightness than words like 'shadow' or 'depression'. Bear with me, I realize that changing words like this may sound pretty hilarious and change the meaning of my words entirely, but most importantly, it will change their tone, which gives me a better chance of keeping my smile as I write this.

So anyways, about Gary. I've met him before. He's a rather heavy-set gentleman, and let me tell you, he weighs a TONNE when you have to give him a piggyback, which I've been doing on and off for almost 2 weeks now. Usually he drops by a bit before the anxiety comes, tells me a load of lies that sometimes I believe (because he can speak so forcefully... man, it's hard to think anything else when Gary's doing his storytelling. You feel his words in your bones, you feel their pain). When I do listen to Gary, I panic. His words swirl around my mind so quickly that I can't stop them, and my body goes haywire -- hyperventilating, sobbing, the whole bit. It lasts about 10-20 minutes, and when it's gone you feel like a hurricane just blew over, took out your whole town, and left you alive (barely) and shaking like a leaf. Then Gary hangs around a little while to survey the damage (probably with a smug, satisfied look on his face), and to make me think that I'll never, ever have the strength, determination, know-how or even the energy to re-build the town again. Those are the times when I just want to leave everything -- school, even friends, and just withdraw and live as a hermit or something. Eventually though, people's love and caring for me, and my own sense of optimism, eventually rally me and I slowly (and perhaps slightly unsteadily) get up and start to pick up the debris and make sense of everything. I get a flash of insight, I see a problem that appeared insurmountable before as suddenly solveable. It takes courage to show my face around town again, but I take a deep breath and do it, and am always glad that I did. What I'm afraid of when I don't want to go to social gatherings or see other people or be asked "How are you?" is the pity. Those words that I know come from the heart and are meant so well, but just feel so... (can I say it?) trite. I mean, my town just got destroyed for Pete's sake, and I'm not always ready for the Romans 8:28 (even though it's my favourite verse), or the "It'll pass", and so on and so on ad infinitum. But I go out, I find the comfort of real and sincere friends, and I start to heal. And most notably, Gary leaves. And things move on, even if he does come back in a similar way from time to time. After all, it's always hurricane season in Leannetown.

This time it's a little different. Gary doesn't feel like leaving. He's skulking around the windows as we speak. His presence is always noticeable, he's not just hanging around before or after the storm, he's settling in, right at the time when I'd like to evict him most. So I go to the doctor about Gary. Gary is too heavy, Gary casts too big of a shadow, Gary eats joy and peace for breakfast. He makes everything black and white, he makes it take ten times the energy it used to just to walk from one room to another, he makes me want to sleep all day, yet not be able to sleep at all. Gary makes food lose its taste, and makes concentrating impossible. I'm worried Gary's last name is Depression. It would be a fitting surname anyways, it sounds dark and heavy enough. But I'm afraid to know Gary's last name. His possible surname carries so much weight and sounds so ominous that I'm afraid just knowing it will make me feel worse, or will make me think that those bad feelings are coming spontaneously, when really they're coming from the ideas that intimidating last name unconsciously puts in my head. Hence why I'm calling him Gary. The doctor, thank God, does not tell me Gary's last name. No labels, just changing medication schedules. He increases my dose of sleeping pills, hoping to get rid of Gary, my insomnia and anxiety with a higher dose of one pill. It's too early to tell, but it really feels to me like Gary is liking this new plan. The medication coupled with Gary's top-of-the-world feeling are combining to make it almost take too much energy to talk much, to listen, to dream. I wrote a midterm today. It took me 4 hours. Good thing I warned my prof about Gary and could get more time! It was just so hard even to write a sentence this morning. But don't despair! As you can see, I can write now, and I'm feeling a lot more like myself. It's not always that bad; it's just that when it is, it feels like it will always be that bad. I have great friends, and that's a blow to Gary. I have a great family, and that's a blow to Gary. I have the best fiance, and that's a blow to Gary. I am a daughter of the King, and that's the biggest punch Gary can get. He's still there, and he's still feasting on all the joy and energy I want to feel, all the concentration I want to have, and a good deal of the hope for the future that I want to experience. It's the worst when I think of my wedding, and all the joy and expectation and longing that I know I feel somewhere, that I want to feel, all the smiles my face wants to really, sincerely wear. Sometimes when I think of my wedding, and of Marc, I cry. If I can feel joy about just one thing, one person and one day, I want it to be that. It should be that. But I'm learning, thanks to the wisdom of friends, to stop thinking how I should feel, or what's right and what's wrong in my thoughts and feelings, and to stop judging and guilting myself about it. To observe my thoughts, recognize them, and let them come (because they inevitably will), but infinitely more importantly, to let them go. By dwelling on them, I become a prisoner of that thought process, but by observing them from a distance, I can let them come and go without dragging myself down their all-too-familiar path.

I will get through this. Or rather, God will get me through this. It's not my fight. Gary's about 100 weight classes above me, so he's out of my realm. It's not a fight at all, actually. I just have to be. To learn to rest, and to learn to wait. This is where God has me, and it's not a divine error. I am loved, I am precious. I am me. And whatever Gary's last name is (if he has one), that will not change.

Love Lea (Just Lea, no Gary! Hooray!)