Authentically Me
Seeking help was a huge step for me, but actually going and receiving the help was a whole different obstacle. Embarrassment, fear, frustration; so many emotions and I had to unpack them with strangers. Tough is all I can say about that experience. Over time though, as I grew more comfortable with the environment and expectations, I began to see glimpses of how the process could help. So many of us, patients, were so weighted down by life that our real personalities and personhood couldn't shine though. It was like we were all behind a opaque glass and the world was on the other side. But you couldn’t tell us we weren’t being genuine or real. From our perspective we were. It wasn’t that we were lying, though some of us were, it was that we were so used to seeing the dark image of ourselves through an opaque glass, we didn’t know we were missing out on the details. It’s like wearing a pair of black sunglasses. No light goes out and no light comes in.
“Authenticity: the quality of being not false or copy; genuine, real”
There is nothing like the haze of mental illness. You just can’t see things correctly, especially yourself. For instance, you graduate college and get a great job offer out of your home town, depression counters with, it’s not the job you wanted, how can you manage in another state when you can’t manage here, see, you still can’t reach your goals. It couldn’t see the great in this situation. I didn’t even mention that most students were struggling to get jobs in the first place. Depression makes it’s living off fear, sadness, and previous pain. How can one be their authentic self operating in those emotions? It doesn’t seem plausible to me that believing the worst and being too scared to hope for the best is me operating as my authentic self.
When I think authentic self I think “see myself as God sees me.” From my perspective He is the manufacturer, He created me. Therefore if I can see what He sees then I am headed on the right path, if I can see what He sees then I can believe with confidence, if I can see what He sees then I will never have to doubt who I am and what I am capable of, if I can see what He sees then my self-worth doesn’t have to be defined by my ability and accomplishments, my self-awareness is not connected to my successes or failures. There is beauty in being able to be your most authentic self with out tangibles defining who that is. There is excitement on the path of discovering who exactly your authentic self is. Differentiating between what life has tried to chip away or depression tried to hide and who/what God wants to reveal through you. It’s a journey, a marathon. Dare to get in the starting blocks with me?
#thoughtlifeco
