Since I was a little kid, I’ve struggled with feeling like I wasn’t good enough. No matter what I did, I always retained this feeling of deficiency. Nothing I did could ever make up for it. Even today, when I’m faced with a crossroads, the decision usually comes when I ask myself this question: “Could you be better?” And while this sort of thing could be seen as an opportunity to grow, to improve as a person and see progress, for myself, as I’ve been learning to see more and more, it was a question that arose always from a place of negativity, and condemnation. It was a chance to remain in a place of comfort, or else choose one path in an effort to prove my worth to myself. If I chose the former, it was because I was weak, and selfish; if I chose the latter, I still found a way to say I was doing it for the wrong reason, or I could have done it with a better attitude. Either way, in my own eyes, I was a failure. This happened all the time — at every possible fork in the road, I found myself facing down multiple possibilities, each of which stood poised with the threat of showing me my own inadequacy in their hands. I could never win, because every accomplishment was compared to all the other ways I could have been better. At the best, I always finished second. But I couldn’t take my place on the podium next to the real winner, because even that would be nothing but a show of arrogance.
I will tell you right up front, that this is a horrible way to live, and very unhealthy. Yet, knowing that, I still continue thinking in this way. It has been my way of life for pretty much as long as I can remember. Today, I have to fight it — and truly, it is a battle. Because in spite of knowing that I shouldn’t let these ways of thinking destroy me, a part of me still believes these lies, and even struggles to call them that.
One of the ways that this way of thinking has brought me down is through depression. Now, I have not been to a doctor or psychiatrist, and I recognise that I am not giving a professional opinion on this. That said, the way that I am should not be normal for anyone. When my anxiety wins a fight — over even the most trivial of things, like calling my bank — it begins a spiral in my mind that often leads very quickly to thoughts of suicide. What causes it initially isn’t important, what matters is the way it makes me feel. Very quickly I begin to degrade myself, to explain my difficulty in the situation by putting myself down, telling myself that I’m not cut out for normal life, that I can’t function like normal people, that I’m not fit for everyday, easy, normal tasks.
If you can’t do those things, why would you think you'd be able to make a career as a self-employed photographer?
Why would you think that people would want to hire you?
You can barely get out of bed some days, and you expect to be able to live a happy life for years on end?
What kind of woman would ever want to bond herself to someone so pitiful, so helpless and needy?
You aren’t worth anyone’s time.
You have some minor skills and positive traits, by they’re far outweighed by your inadequacy and weakness.
If you were capable of doing better, then you would be doing better now.
You just can’t do better. You can’t be better. Because you’re no good.
You’re worthless. That’s just the way you are. And you aren’t going to change, because you’re too weak to change.
Those things all go through my mind in the space of about a minute. And I let them, and I encourage them. I submit to these lies, and I find ways to say that they all make perfect sense. They can be spurred from the smallest, most inconsequential things. I don’t get around to doing much that I don’t see as absolutely crucial, because nearly everything makes me anxious. The prospect of asking my landlord when exactly my lease is up is frightening to me — so I put it off. Pursuing another job or making a career move is terrifying — so I stay still, and become stagnant. I want to do great things, to make beautiful work, but I’m afraid. Without even knowing what frightens me. It’s just this vague, ominous, weighty discomfort, it pushes down on me till I’m on the floor and have abandoned any notion of progress or growth or change. Fear keeps me from living my life.
Familiar things frighten me, and new things do so all the more. If I can be thrown unexpectedly into a situation that I don’t know quite how to handle, I can simply roll with the punches and get through it. If I have time to deliberate, however, then I’m most likely to simply not do anything. Maybe one of the reasons I can be so impulsive is that I know deep down if I give myself time to think, I’ll be too afraid to act. So I jump without looking. Most of the time, that turns out better than my well-thought-out decisions.
Fear keeps me from the things in life that I value the most. It keeps me from success in my personal life, and the things I want to improve upon. It keeps me from having the sort of relationships that I crave. I think the most horrible things about myself, and so naturally I assume others wouldn’t really want me. I have to be very careful, because I don’t want to be too much — too emotional, too excited, too sad, too honest, to broken, too enthusiastic… Too much myself. I’m afraid of people not liking what they see if I give them too much. So I hold back, and tell myself it’s for the best, because no one really wants that much of me.
Fear keeps me from getting close to women. I think to myself, "I have so much love to give, and so much I wish I could do for this person … they probably don’t want the same, and if I show them my heart, they’ll run away anyway. I might as well not get close to them.” O, how I want to be close.
I recently bought a notebook, with the intention of using it to keep a daily journal. Just a few thoughts jotted down each day, consistently. Here is my entry from the 19th of April, just a few days ago.
What is it that you want from life, Joel?
I want to be married, and to love my wife like Yeshua loves her. I want us to be one, as the Father and Son are one; I want us to live in unity, harmony, and peace. I want to have children, who live each day knowing that I love them, because I have a Father who loves me. I want them to never doubt that. I want them, through my love, to discover the love of Yeshua. I want to have a space where these ideals can exist and grow; a space where all are welcome, where all can know that they are loved.
I don’t need the ‘adventurer’ life; I don’t need to travel the world, or be known by it. I need to know love, True Love, and I need to share it. To live such a life, would truly be beautiful. I should be very grateful for such a life.
Those are desires that exist at the very core of who I am. And they are under attack, on a daily basis, by the fear and anxiety and deceptions that are at work within my very mind. If those desires are ever to be fulfilled, love must triumph over fear in my life. Every day, I have a choice to make: to let fear rule me, and destroy the hope I have for the future, to lay in ruin the dreams that I have, or to push aside the lies, and grasp the truth with clenched fists — that truth that I am unconditionally, and eternally, loved.
The last few days have been very rough for me. It had got to the point once again where foggy ideas began to form in my mind, ideas about how I could gradually distance myself from the people who care about me, because if I were to do away with my life, it would be easier to not have anyone close. (These are real thoughts for me, and likely for many who find themselves in a similar emotional or mental state. I mention it merely to be honest, because whether or not we talk about, many are struggling in this way.) In the midst of this, I saw a video on YouTube from Oliver Hughes entitled “If You’re Discouraged…” I had seen the video show up in my subscription feed the day before, and being too much in a state to bother with anything that might try to lift me out of the dirt, I’d skipped over it. Today, I was in exactly the place I needed to be in order to watch it. Because there is always just a tiny mote of hope in me, something that wants to be saved. I’m not strong enough to do the saving, and I know that; I know that I need intervention, someone else to step into my life in some way and help. But I’m too afraid to ask. Yet, in this marvellous age in which we live, I can sit depressed in my apartment in Northwest Arkansas, and let into my life that wisdom and love of a friend who I’ve never met, who lives in another state, and doesn’t even know I exist. Yet he is a friend. And with his words he affected me more than he could have known he would.
Oliver gave me hope. He reminded me that there are others like me, that we aren’t alone, and that we do have a choice. It’s a terribly hard one — maybe the hardest thing I’ll ever do, yet something I have to do every day — to choose to stand up, put away the lies that are being whispered in my ear, hold firmly to the truth, and keep moving forward. Every day may be difficult, but that also means it has the potential to be beautiful. I can be beautiful. I am worthy, and I am loved, and I can be great — great in perseverance, great in hope, great in patience, great in love. But to be any of that, I have to make a choice. And I will. I will never wake up having run the race in my sleep. The work begins when I choose to get out of bed.
I am learning through this journey that life is a tremendously difficult thing to go through. I should expect that. We all should. Life is a trial, but it is a beautiful one all the same. The greatest tragedy that I could allow to befall me, would be to let it be tragic without choosing to make it beautiful as well. And if you’re in a similar place to me, I hope and pray that it gets better from here on out. That you choose to make it better. Don’t believe the lies, and hold onto hope, each and every day.
love,
— Joel