Depressed and Ashamed Again

I am depressed again. Things were going so well until this spring my therapist said something that made me feel ashamed and not trust anyone. I stopped seeing her. I started to feel okay after a while but I still feel I  cannot talk about a lot of my feelings openly with people.

Less than a week ago something else happened and now I am just wanting to crawl away and hide because I have been directly and openly been told that what I say on facebook is inappropriate. All my friends on facebook are over 18, so it should not be a problem, but it is. I am a visible representative of Christianity as a whole and what I say is not appropriate, but here is the thing, I do not really think there is anything wrong with what I say. I am openly and honestly expressing who I am and what I think, but who I am is not appropriate. I have been chastised for it directly by church leadership.

I do not feel I can both serve God and express who I am. In order to be a good Christian I now have to either change who I am what I think and feel, or keep it a secret. The first is not going to happen because I have tried that and no matter how hard I have prayed God has not changed who I am. The second possibility is not something I want to do. The thought of censoring myself and acting as if there is something shameful about me and my opinions and thoughts is revolting to me and makes me feel trapped and honestly so depressed I have trouble getting up out of bed in the morning. I am sleeping more. I am forgetful and distracted. In short I am depressed.

I guess my world is really small and pathetic when my number one form of self expression is facebook status messages. I spent so long to learn to love and accept myself that now when I am no longer standing in my way others are. My therapist, the lay leader of my church, other church members who have complained to her about it, basic Christian decency, what ever it is I am trapped between a rock and a hard place. I have to not live honestly as who I am but I have to learn to hide things and keep secrets and nothing is more depressing, discouraging and disheartening as that. It is so against who I am but if I am to become depressed again and hide away who I am I guess so be it. I am not so great anyway.

Masturbation

Flicking the bean, parting the lotus petals, you know, masturbation. I honestly know very few terms for female masturbation. Still I am going to talk about it.

I just saw this video: https://youtu.be/VQoyIyW3h6k

It is about male masturbation. I am going to talk about female masturbation. The Bible does not talk about it, so let's by pass the verses, because there are none.

In the video the man says masturbation=lust. I do not know the minds of men, or all women. I do know my own mind. I rarely think about anything but getting off when I rub it. I just want to feel good and no fantasies of men, women or other things are necessary. So lust: not a problem.

He also states it is a selfish act. I do not get that at all. I mean, I have never had sex unselfishly. Maybe that is just a part of being a woman. All I *really* care about is feeling good. I mean it is nice if the guy has a good time too but men always have a good time, they do not need special things like foreplay or romance. Furthermore that is like saying eating alone in selfish because a meal is meant to be shared. A meal is ALWAYS more special with someone special but I am not going forego satisfying my physical needs just because I am not married.

He also mentions that masturbation is not legitimate for relieving stress because you feel guilty after. I have never felt guilt for masturbation. I have always wondered if I should but it has never happened with my solo exploration. I have felt guilty for looking at porn, reading erotic stories and for sexual fantasies, sex with a partner who I was not married to, but never for masturbation.

I forget what other bullshit he spouts but he reminds me of a Muslim man. 90% of Muslim men I have spoken too say it is a sin to masturbate and fornication is more natural and therefore more okay.

Masturbation is a gift from God as I look at it. I have a VERY HIGH sex drive and of I could not masturbate and fulfill my needs that way I would have a lot more premarital sex and feel a lot guiltier. Also, I have prayed while masturbating before. I do not think it is weird, God sees me do it and I feel okay with that so sometimes while building up I have a little conversation with him. Call me weird, but I do not think masturbation is a sin.

You know what is a sin? Spilling your seed on the ground while you are fucking your brother's wife. No coitus interruptus for you adulterers.

Here is more about male vs. female masturbation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaY89TPgjak

Becoming Paula

Lately I have come to accept that I am not intended for marriage. This is not a sad reality. I think that marriage is sometimes over glorified. Marriage has benefits,yes, all sorts, physical, spiritual and emotional. As the Bible says something about a stone sharpening a stone so we can grow putting up with the annoyances of another person. When we look at this we seem to forget Paul recommending not marrying. He did great things for God. With no wife.

Why am I talking about this? Was I not exceedingly happy while I was marrieds? Yes, and no. It was the best I had ever known. The reality is that I have always felt that marriage was not for me. As a child I really wanted to be an old maid. Even as a a teen I did not think I would marry. This was in big contrast to the fact that I had a really strong sex drive. My sex drive was not the kind that was okay with just sleeping around. All my fantasies, then and now include committed loving relationships with love. My body and spirit had contrasting desires.

Did I marry my ex-husband for sex? Yes and no. I also married him because I loved him and had intensely committed to him and up on marriage I was willing and able to love him until one of us died and that was the case until the divorce.

There is another reason I married. I was profoundly mentally ill. What I needed was therapy and medication and a reliance up on God, not marriage, or relationship of any kind. When I am in a relationship my spiritual growth becomes profoundly retarded. I give too much of what is God's to my partner. I love intensely all consumingly and committedly. My love is the stuff of romances. It is also suffocating and unhealthy.

Sometimes what we most want is the least good for us. I never grew up nor figured what I wanted because I was so intensely committed to my husband. Now I am thriving and scared that I will jeopardize all the wonderful things I have accomplished by falling into another relationship. Also it is quite clear that I have terrible taste in men. My standards are fall too low. Clearly the common factor in my dismal romantic history is me and I have to accept the blame and that God's blessing has not been up on any of it.

In contrast I am blessed and productive and growing and happy with myself alone. Unless God finds me the perfect man, I am not interested and perfection does not appear in reality, so I think I am safe. Just call me Paula, the female apostle preaching the gospel of Jesus and remaining unmarried. : P

Business

The problem with me is that I have no concept of "business" as in whose business something is. My business, your business, nobody's business all become everybody's business. Am I gossip? Yes, but I do not believe my motives are malicious. Am I untrustworthy? In a way I am.

This does not primarily mean I will go tell your business to everybody. What I do mostly is I tell my business to everyone. I have no concept of why this would be a bad idea. I tell people all about my sex life, or lack of it. I have zero problem talking about sex. I think the problem is that people assume that if I talk about it I will have it, with them. This is not the case. I just am very comfortable with myself.

I accept my mistakes and I am comfortable with myself. I do things I am not proud of but I have no concept of why I should not share these things with practically everyone, anyone. Why not? I just have no filter.
I think people assume there is more I am not sharing. I have juicier secrets, like them. Secrets they keep secret. I have no secrets. Believe me. Ask me anything. I may not announce it online but I have no secrets. Maybe I am somehow disabled.

You may say that this is fine. It is my business who I tell my stuff to. I am an idiot but what ever floats my retarded boat. The real problem comes when your business and my business intersect and become the same thing. I have to exert quite a bit of will power not to blab my business, because it is your business. I try, but every once in a while it jumps out. It probably does not comfort you when I tell you how hard I try to keep it under wraps because people usually just see that one time when their dirty little secret was shared by me.

The Invisible Illness

As my name on this blog tells you I consider myself a skeptic but I do not do scientific skepticism here much, and I will not do it here either. I want to talk about how grateful and blessed I am by modern medicine and the scientific method that has provided us with this ever changing, improving medical science.

I have always been very healthy in body most of the problems I have ever had are pretty much in my head. The health problems I have can not be seen on the surface, even by medical professionals sometimes. This does not mean they are incompetent, this means they can not read minds. You can not see pain or mental illness on the outside often that is why they are misunderstood by observers, and sometimes even by sufferers.

I was very lucky. When I had my breakdown and I descended into my dark place of depression and psychosis I received treatment but every step of the way I had to fight to get it and advocate for myself. I seemed calm rational and sane even as I was breaking down. I tried to explain to doctors that I was breaking down but  they just saw someone who seemed to be alright. When I was at the hospital the psychiatrist was not sure I necessarily needed anti-depressants. I had to explain to her this was not a temporary condition that would go away as the initial stress went away. She believed me and medicated me. 

I got so lucky. The first medication I was given worked. This does not happen every time, often people have to go through years of trial and error to find the right medicine. Thank you medical science, thank you God. It also worked fast. After three weeks I felt like I turned a corner. One day dramatically things looked different, less enormous. It was like the elephant I had to eat was chopped up into bite sized pieces and I saw that there was a possibility that over time I could get over this and the task in front of me could be accomplished with time. I was cautious. I made them keep me another week. They wanted to send me home after a week at first, then two, then three but I had to make them keep me until I was ready to go, until my medicine was working, until the feeling of facing the world outside did not fill me with unspeakable terror.

 

My struggle continued outside. Things got harder as I got out, as they tend to. I had to face the world, face my husband and the stresses of being out on my own for the first time ever. I still miss being at the hospital sometimes. It was so safe there. I had to now convince a whole new set of people I was sick. I was optimistic and full of enthusiasm to get on the path to my new life but every one had their own idea about what I should do and they did not ask me what I needed.

 

I had to convince a new mental health nurse I was sick, and eventually that my depression had worsened and I had regressed several months and had to up my medicine, also I had to convince a psychiatrist. They were not incompetent, or blind, or anything. They just could not read minds. I was clean, my clothes were nice and I took care of myself and I felt better when I talked to others. How could they possibly see the dark moments of depression and loneliness I experienced? They were not in my messy apartment as I forced myself to make something to eat and broke down crying in the middle of slicing vegetables, collapsing to the floor and swearing tourets like: Bastard, fucking passive-aggressive douche bag! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fucking asshole!

The real difficulty was convincing the non-medical people. I have been told by so many people that I should not have tried to kill myself because suicide is a sin. Really? Wow, you know, I did not grow up in the Christian culture so I really had no idea. (What is the font for sarcasm?) My parents, every time my medication comes up, are still trying to convince me I should stop taking it. They do not understand. It was even worse in the beginning listening to my father's two hour lectures about the evils of psychology. Don't get me wrong, my parents are great and supportive in this time. They just do not understand, or even in some cases, acknowledge my sickness.

People tell me I should just pick myself up by my boot straps and clean my home. After all, it won't take that long, it is a small apartment. Just pick up after yourself. I wish I could. I really wish I could. Get a job, any job, earn money and quit living off the government. Even immigrants who do not know how to speak Finnish can get jobs in cleaning because they want to. People are poor in Kosovo and things are bad there but they have no depression.

That is what I hear. It is hard, I am alone in my sickness in a lot of ways. Make no mistake about it. I am ill. Just because I am not visibly ill does not mean I am fine. If you were to take a look at my brain under an MRI you would find that my hippo campus has drastically shrunk from what is normal for a 31 year old woman. The functioning of my frontal lobe is different and impaired. I have a drug to treat the chemical imbalance and slow the re-uptake of serotonin but only by taking it for a long time and going to therapy and in general living a healthy happy life can I hope to fix the physical changes in my brain. There is a hope that one day I will be fully cured and my depression will go into remission forever, but I may have to be medicated for the rest of my life. The first possibility is what I hope for but I am alright with the second. I am willing to take my chances.

What about the long term side effects of anti-depressants? We are not aware of all of them. Some may say. I answer: What about them? I have a friend with diabetes. There are long term side effects with having to take insulin too, but no one worries about that because it is necessary for her to live and they understand she will take it forever. I do not see how my case, if I am medicated for the rest of my life, is much different.

Update on My Life

How has life been treating the Skeptigirl?  You may ask. Well, life is treating me well. I am still sick but I am happy. I have realized that there is so much more and better things to life. My world has expanded. Sometimes I am lonely, sometimes I am angry but regardless of being depressed I am very happy. I am sure that last part makes very little sense.

I no longer believe in romantic love, it is a load of poo. I seriously do not think I will ever get married again because I really do not see the point. I have loads of great friends and family and my self-esteem is really high, like arrogantly high. Come on, I am awesome, smart, likeable, talented and seriously good looking. I mean my looks are astronomical.

Anyways, life is good, no need to worry about me. Maybe I will post  real blog post sometime soon, or a video, or something.

How my Life Fell Apart 2, The Crawl Foreward

When someone asks me when I am Christian I usually tell them the story of when I got saved when I was eight and tell them that God spoke to my heart in love and asked to let him in and to become his beloved daughter. He asked nothing from me, only that I love him back. This loving back was not a condition for me to get his love, no. He loved me anyway.

He had created me and watched me grow and knew all my weaknesses and strenghts and saw me at my worst and at my best through out my life, before and after I met him. I have failed so many times in my life to love him back properly but his unconditional love has never wavered, lessened nor drawn back.

Tree months ago I tried to kill myself as a result of my husband leaving me for another woman and completely shaking and leveling my whole world. My family was all I had. I had nothing, I could not sleep or eat and I suffered from crippling axiety. 

Suicide is a big no-no in Christianity, the unforgiveable sin, almost. In this case God not only forgave me but protected me and loved me even more noticeably than before because I needed it so much. He made sure I was picked up by the police who took me to the hospital where I recieved good care and recovered from the physical results of my suicide attempt. He also was with me in that dark place that I fell to. 

After my husband pulled my entire world out from under me I was alone and could see no light but I was with Jesus in this lonely darkness. He held me as I wept in shock, sorrow and rage. He bore my childish fits of screaming "WHY!" He loved me not because I was so special but because he is love.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8

I think I have come out on the other side of this tragedy. I have accepted that my once happy life with my family is over. I am making a new life for myself wth its highest goal being to find God's plan for me. If I am in God's will, I know I will be happy because: "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God" Roman's 8:28

I am still in the all things phase but I am starting to believe strongly that they will work out for good, soon. 

I do not usually include verses in my posts but I have been gaining a great deal of comfort from these verses because I am missing a lot of tangible love that I once had in my life. It was ripped from me suddenly with no warning leaving me experiencing withdraval symptoms. So I hope you will indulge me posting one last verse that made me cry earlier because I was overwhelmed by its beauty.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39