It wasn’t exactly how I expected to feel on my wedding day or in the months leading up to it. I’d always believed that planning a wedding would be one of the most fun experiences of my life. Since before I’d even started dating Sam, I’d had diaries and Pinterest boards of what I wanted my wedding to look like, the kind of dress I wanted to wear, who my bridesmaids would be, and what I’d say in my vows.
But now the day had come. There was no putting it off because I “didn’t feel like it.” The ball had been set into motion and my only job was to keep it rolling. And do it with a smile on my face.
When I woke up July 7, 2018, all I wanted to do was go back to bed. I was sleeping in a beautiful cottage on the wedding venue’s property. Most of my bridesmaids were asleep in the beds downstairs. Eventually my maid of honor came upstairs to make sure I was awake and to bring me coffee. She also needed to remind me that I couldn’t put off writing my vows anymore and told me not to come downstairs until they were finished. (Jerk.)
I’m someone who loves to write, but I did not want to write these vows. I wanted to freeze time. Not to preserve some blissful moment of perfect happiness, but to freeze the moment until I was actually happy enough to enjoy it.
Soon the make-up artists and hair stylists arrived. Soon it was time to move the party to the main house. Soon it was time to put on my dress and get ready for my first-look photos with my dad and then with my soon-to-be-husband.
Now if you’ve never experienced severe depression or anxiety, it might be hard to understand how one can smile while also feeling the overwhelming urge to cry. I don’t look back at my wedding pictures and see some hollow-eyed girl that was only going through the motions. That’s Hollywood’s version of depression. No, I see a, beautiful version of myself that had a wonderful time at her wedding. My laughs were real. My smile wasn’t fake. It’s just that underneath all of the tulle and pearls was someone who’d been lost for over a year.
I remember being in a weird mood the day I’d gotten engaged. Sam and I had talked a lot about getting engaged for the last two years and we’d picked out a ring. I knew a proposal was coming, but I didn’t know it was coming on that particular day. I wasn’t even suspicious when Sam, who can drink like 20 beers and be fine, said he wasn’t fit to drive after his one margarita and needed to walk it off.
I still remember the exact moment when he stopped in a hotel courtyard beneath some outdoor twinkly lights and got down on one knee. I don’t remember anything he said because in my head I was screaming. What are you doing? Get up get up get up. Don’t do this now. This isn’t what I want. I’m not ready for this. This isn’t how I pictured it going. I don’t feel like getting engaged tonight. Please don’t let this be real. Please take me home. Please let me wake up and this all be a dream. I’ll be ready to get engaged later, but not now. Now’s not a good time. Please, please, please stand up.
Eventually, he did stand up after I nodded my head and accepted his proposal, trying to make sure my face and reaction looked like those of someone who’d finally gotten engaged to her best friend.
After that, everything is a blur. We took pictures, FaceTimed our parents, kissed and hugged, ran to the car in a rain shower, called our best friends, and enjoyed a glass of wine at home.
Despite what you might think based on my initial reaction, I really did want to marry Sam. We’d been dating for 4 years, we’d talked about this next chapter of our lives for at least two years, and we were planning on moving in together.
Now as I write this, after a year of marriage, I have no regrets about having said yes even when my head was screaming no. Even in that moment, when Sam was saying the sweetest, most carefully thought out words, I knew that I wanted to marry him and that I couldn’t let this voice inside my head ruin any future happiness for myself.
I knew that the voice in my head was reacting out of fear, out of mismanaged expectations, and out of a growing seed of anxiety. Unfortunately the engagement set a pretty good precedent for what would follow over the next year as we planned the wedding. Unlike most couples, Sam was the one who dragged me along to look at venues, do tastings, get invites made, and plan a honeymoon.
I got really good at going through the motions. I rehearsed our engagement story over and over so if someone asked how Sam proposed, I knew exactly where to make a joke and when to laugh, smile or roll my eyes with mock annoyance. It became a better rehearsed story than any president’s speech on inauguration day.
While Sam and I planned our wedding for the following summer, I became more and more depressed. We’d gotten engaged in June and by January, I was crying almost every day. I’d be sitting in church with tears rolling down my face not even knowing why. I felt sick all the time. Work was miserable because everyone was always asking me about the wedding and I hated talking about it. I sunk deeper into a hole of anxiety.
When the wedding day finally came, there was a strange unattachment to it all. Unlike other brides who pour over every detail from the flowers to the napkin rings, I’d been pretty hands off the design. I’d hired a wedding coordinator, showed her pictures on Pinterest for the cream-and-white-elegant aesthetic that I wanted, and then stepped back.
When my maid-of-honor and I walked around the dining room before guests arrived, she encouraged me just to take it all in. And I’m not kidding (just maybe a little biased) when I say it was the most beautiful wedding venue I’d ever seen. It rivaled a Downton Abbey wedding at Highclere Castle. Once again, I knew I’d made the right choice to be there that day, but it didn’t keep me from crying a little as I walked around the tables, saw the cake for the first time, and looked at the memorial table of all the family members who’d passed away.
It really was the happiest day of my life, but I was severely depressed.
The honeymoon wasn’t much better. Thank goodness Sam and I went to Napa Valley so I could drown my worries and anxiety in wine. I cried a lot. I probably cried more after the wedding than before because now there wasn’t anything keeping me from giving in to the depression completely. I got sick several times. We had sex twice and I hated it both times. I didn’t want to be touched, but I didn’t want to be alone either. I didn’t want to stay in the hotel room, but I didn’t want to be around people. God bless Sam. I don’t know how he put up with me.
Looking back in hindsight a year after my wedding, I see that season in my life as a very big catalyst for getting me to where I am now.
Being depressed on my wedding day was the kick in the pants I needed to make a change. With Sam’s encouragement, we started going to therapy. I made a doctor’s appointment to figure out why I was throwing up all the time. Turns out it wasn’t only my anxiety that was attacking me, but I also had gallstones and needed my gallbladder removed. I went to a psychiatrist to get medication to treat my anxiety and depression. I visited a gynecologist to experiment with other birth controls. I spent a lot of time in prayer, in the Word, and in Bible Study with dear friends. I shared revelations about my mental health online and basked in the encouragement that so many friends sent me on social media.
I was stunned by just how many of my friends on Facebook and Instagram also dealt with anxiety and depression. Some friends were in therapy; others were on medication. They messaged me privately at all times of the day and night. They sent me songs of encouragement and shared stories of hope. It was mind blowing.
As I spoke more openly about it online, people in the outer circles of my life (like my co-workers and people I volunteered with at church) came up to me in person and whispered their similar experiences.
Soon I began to realize that nearly all of my friends had felt the same way I was feeling at one point or another. Yet no one talked about it unless they could DM me privately or catch me alone in the hallway.
Right now mental illness is actively becoming more and more destigmatized in the news, in Hollywood, and in social media. However, when it comes to opening up about our everyday lives, there is still a lot of shame associated with this struggle.
But did you know that 16 million American adults live with major depression? Did you know that 42 million American adults live with severe anxiety? According to the World Health Organization, “less than half of those who meet diagnostic criteria for psychological disorders are identified by doctors.” Did you know that women are 47.6% more likely to develop any mental illness and that the most common age for mental illness to arise for both genders is between 18-25 years old?
There are so many of us in the same boat yet we're all sailing alone. Depression has this debilitating power to make us feel like we’re isolated from the rest of the world when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I want to speak to all genders and all ages when I say this: You are not alone. Nor is depression and anxiety one size fits all. How you deal with depression and anxiety is up to you. For some, the answer isn’t medication or therapy. That’s okay! For some, journaling helps keep their thoughts and feelings in check or they channel their emotions into music or they talk it out with friends. No matter what avenue you take to deal with your mental health, be encouraged by the knowledge that at least you’re trying.
Now take inventory of where you’re at right now. Are you trying? Or have you given up? When the alarm clock goes off do you stay in bed and call out of work? Or do you get up and do your best to get through the day? Do you scroll mindlessly through social media comparing your everyday reality to everyone else’s heavily-filtered highlight reel? Or do you go out and participate in real life yourself?
I have no sympathy for quitters, but I have the utmost respect for those who keep trying even when it’s hard. Maybe your win for the day is just simply getting out of bed in the morning. Maybe your win is not turning down an invitation to go to brunch with some friends. Maybe your win is putting on sweatpants and walking around the block. Whatever trying looks like for you, keep doing it.
I don’t mean to be dramatic when I say that giving up will be the death of you. That’s not just because suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. and that 90% of suicide victims have an underlying mental illness. It’s because when you quit living your life to your fullest ability, the devil wins. We lose when we isolate ourselves from the people who love us the most.
A war cannot be won without an army. And girl, you’ll never need a bigger army than when you have a liar shouting through the door to your brain,”you’re not enough! You’ll never be enough! You’re a waste of space! An ugly waste of space!” So get you some truth sayers in your life to combat the devil’s words!
In order to effectively deal with all the side effects of mental illness (fear, insecurity, body-image, FOMO, comparison, unhappiness, aimless wandering, etc.) we have to get control of our thoughts. I know. It seems like such an impossible task. It’s hard to believe that we have any control whatsoever when it comes to what we think about and why.
I want this to be a place for you to learn along-side your fellow-struggling sister. Our mental state dictates the life we live. It can ignite our will to thrive or it can diminish our desire to survive. It can encourage our truths or it can amplify our lies.
Our brains are incredibly powerful tools that can be used for good or for evil. When you let your mind stop you from loving others and being loved in return, you’ve let your most powerful weapon be used against you.
I want to be a part of your army. I want to be your encouragement commander. I want to be a foot soldier in the trenches with you when the enemy’s lies rain down on you like fiery arrows. Together we are stronger.
As it’s sung in one of my favorite songs by Keala Settle:
Another round of bullets hits my skin. Well, fire away 'cause today, I won't let the shame sink in. We are bursting through the barricades, And reaching for the sun, We are warriors. Yeah, that's what we've become.
-This is Me, The Greatest Showman
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