Being Real

I remember being a young, naive little 12 year old. One Sunday, my beehive teacher asked as part of a church lesson, "What do you want to be remembered by?" My answer came quickly, like I didn't even need to think about it. I replied, "I want to be remembered as always being happy." At the time, this seemed easy. Surely being happy was a choice, I thought, and I would simply always make that choice.

Fast forward 4 years... I was 16 years old, and I was engulfed in depression for the very first time. Suddenly, happiness wasn't a choice anymore. I tried to keep it up. "I am happy," I'd tell myself, "Always happy." But inside, I was hollow. It seemed like everyone should be able to see right through my fake smile, but they couldn't. They didn't know anything had changed, so I kept smiling, kept faking, kept hiding. I wanted to be happy, but the feeling wasn't there very often anymore.

Fast forward 5 more years... I was a newly married 21 year old engulfed in depression again. People would say, "How are you always so happy?" and then I'd go home and cry. I felt like a fraud. No one knew that behind that bleak smile was more pain than my heart had ever before endured, but I thought I still had to hide. I had to be happy. After all, how could I ever be remembered as being a happy person all the time unless I kept a constant smile plastered on my face, even if it wasn't real?

But eventually I couldn't keep it up anymore. It hurt too much. I needed help and love and support, so I did the scariest thing imaginable at the time, and I opened up about my struggle with depression. I knew that it would change how people viewed me and that I wouldn't be viewed as the "always happy" person anymore. But something else changed that I couldn't foresee. It took time, but after a while, I didn't want to be known as the person who was always happy anymore. Instead, I wanted to be known as the person who was real, the person who wasn't afraid to admit that life hurts so deeply sometimes, the person who was relatable and available when someone else's heart and world was crumbling.

Depression has changed my life forever, but more importantly, it has changed me, and I'm thankful that I can be real and loved for it.