Depression Descending

 

There is no getting over it. The Skeptigirl is starting to get depressed. I only admitted it to the Skeptiboy last night when we got into bed. I haven’t been depressed for several years now, maybe three or four. Sure I have felt down but I have not been able to sustain it and I have bounced back. Everything has been getting really hard lately. I am panicking at night about small stuff I have to do and haven’t done. Well, I go through phases like that but overall it was the reason I failed out of college. I also feel lonely and empty inside my chest, now that is not a phase, it is only something I feel when I am really truly depressed. This makes me worried.

I am not exactly sure why I feel this way. My first guess might be to think it is because a recent string of disappointments and failures I have had like being rejected from the program of study I applied for, or the financial troubles we had because I messed up on my paperwork and lost my unemployment benefits for over a month, or that I cannot get job practice positions I want because other people do not think I am as awesome as I do. That still should not cause this. My depression has never really been circumstance related, especially since I am still optimistic about my future and have plans for it.

I also have trouble feeling God listening when I pray. I am not sure why but when I really settle down for a long conversation I just feel like I am talking to the walls. Also my disappointment with the people of God is rearing its ugly head. I am getting nothing but plain old friendship and company from my church community. There is just one guy who is a bit “special” in whom I feel the spirit of God (you know people who are just a little abnormal but completely functional and normally intelligent, just different). Seeing him and talking to him really encourages me. The rest seem kind of plastic. Actually I see no difference in them, or feel it for that matter, from the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons. I don’t feel the true spirit of God in any of them. I know “feeling” the spirit of God is vague and I am not authoritative gauge of God’ Spirit and the problem could be with me. An atheist would say “You aren’t feeling it because it is not there, idiot!” I think the best way I could describe how it feels is a feeling of gentle love and genuine concern. It is in the way a person listens and takes an interest in another and opens themselves up and acts out of love. I feel that in me sometimes when I help others and take a genuine interest in them and truly love them unconditionally. I am not good with that, I have never been, but sometimes I manage to love the way God intends.

In conclusion, I am depressed and having a religious crisis and getting nothing out of my church fellowship. Also, as Ghandi is thought to have said: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” (source, the disputed section)