Preface: I wrote this post a few weeks ago, but it’s a tough story to tell, so I’ve had it hiding away in my lap top for a while.  I wrote this just after the news that a friend’s brother had taken his life, the next day it was Robin Williams, and the next day the events of Ferguson.  Our world is a mess.  This week several other friends lost someone to the battle of depression and I know it’s time to tell this part of the story. So, without further adieu…

Can I just take a second to state the obvious? Life is hard.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I count my blessings multiple times a day. But we live in a broken world and sometimes life just seems overwhelmingly difficult.  I’m not even talking about how difficult the past couple weeks have been for me personally with doing a refi on the house, finally getting my AC fixed after 6 weeks in the Midwest summer, a biopsy (it was negative…YAY!) and having to miss my baby’s birthday party.  I’m talking about the fact that sometimes we deal with the turmoil of senseless tragedies, and people acting out in violence simply because they feel entitled, and then there is the tragic devastation that sometimes people reach a place of hopelessness that leads them to believe they just cannot go on in this world.

Life is hard. For all of us.  Everywhere.  No one is exempt.  That is reality.  But sometimes it becomes more than that.  Sometimes that hardness seems overwhelming, oppressive, suffocating.

Think about it, no matter what the situation, almost everyone has some kind of escape, don’t they? Alcohol, drugs, shopping, relationships, food, our kids, travel, endorphins?  Yes, endorphins.  Just take your pick. We use all kinds of things to numb the pain of the real world and all the heart aches that come with it.  Sometimes we use all of these things.  But eventually, the buzz wears off, the relationship gets rocky, the race is over, the hunger returns.  And what are we left with?  A feeling of emptiness.  So we get high again.  Or move on to someone who we have a better connection with.  Or sign up for another race.  Or rack up more credit card debt. Or grab a fork. But no matter what our chosen method of “self-medicating” might be, it will never cure anything if we don’t acknowledge what the real issue is hiding behind those go to obsessions.

And for some, it goes beyond that. That’s where the oppressive and suffocating kick in. I’ve heard a lot of opinions about Depression recently, so I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.  Depression is real.  Anxiety is real.  PTSD is real.  But until we have stood in another person’s shoes, we have absolutely no idea what they are thinking or feeling.  And until one has felt so trapped and stared complete hopelessness in the face, they cannot possibly know what that is like.

When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I had no idea of the journey before me. As I have dared to tell my story, so many have come forward to share their stories with me.  Here is a little more of my story…

You might be wondering how I could possibly know what that hopelessness looks like? People have told me all my life that my smile can light up a room.  But sometimes it’s the people with the biggest smiles, or the ones who make you laugh the loudest, who are hiding the most pain.  Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, I know it all.  I have been to the brink of that hopeless despair, I have looked it in the eye and somehow I backed away from the edge.  But I have been to that place where I felt so trapped that I couldn’t possibly imagine how I would go on and I can tell you that when you get to that place it feels impossible to string these 2 simple words together: “Help…me.”  And I have felt so stuck that it seems there is no other way out.  I have felt suffocated.

Not everyone is called off the ledge like I was. Why was I called back?  I don’t entirely know for sure.  But I do know that I won’t let it be for naught.  I have been called to a higher purpose and I hope that I am able to rise to the occasion.

Today when I was at work, I was encouraging a woman to come and run with one of our social groups. She kept insisting she wasn’t good enough.  Bah!  We love to have all levels at our events, it’s totally ok.  Later, as I went off to swim by myself, rather than join a group swim that was meeting just a couple hours later, it occurred to me, I was doing the same thing.  Any time we don’t feel up to par, we try to go it alone.  And isn’t it the times that we feel like we don’t measure up that we need people more than ever?  So why is it so hard to say, I’m struggling, I feel like I’m not enough.  But if I ask for help, I feel like I’m asking too much.  And so, I’ll just stay over here and try to suffer through this on my own.

Right now I’m reading a book titled Wild by Cheryl Strayed. It is the story of a woman in her mid 20’s who had never even been hiking before the day she arrived in the Mojave Desert to backpack the Pacific Crest Trail alone.  Simply to prove to herself that she could.  Last week as I was reading, this part struck me and I’d like to share it with you…

“I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done.  Immediately, I amended the thought.  Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I’d ever done.  Leaving Paul and destroying our marriage and life as I knew it for the simple and inexplicable reason that I felt I had to—that had been hard as well.  But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way.  In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.”

Yep. That is exactly why I do what I do.  Saying Good-bye to my dad and living without him is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.  Making the choice to leave my marriage and take on all the challenges that came with that, that was equally as hard.  Telling the story of the abuse I faced as a young girl, the hardest part of that was actually dragging it out of the dark after 25 years. But doing the hardest thing I could think of, an Ironman, makes all the daily ins and outs of general life, and the traumas of my own, seem a tiny bit less hard.

Come November, when I embark upon a course of the hardest race I’ve ever done, I will seek the finish line to hear my name, followed by the words, “You are an Ironman.” I will be seeking the acknowledgement for all of the hard things.  The race will come and go, and whatever will happen will happen.  But the thing about that day is I won’t be out there alone.  I have friends that will be on the course with me, friends that will be volunteering, friends who are going to AZ specifically to cheer us on.  If there is one thing I have learned on this journey of life it’s that I don’t have to do it alone.  None of us do.

This week I received an unsolicited text from my friend Kristen that read: “Just wanted to tell you that you are so damn strong and beautiful. That hits me every time I see you…I know life can be a struggle but you always seem to come out with a smile on your face.  Nice work.  Nice work indeed.”

Kristen sees my smiles. She has also seen my tears.  And this is a reminder that when I am smiling, or crying, or in the times I can’t seem to find the tears that need to escape, it’s ok to say “I can’t do it alone today.  Help me.”  There is so much courage in vulnerability.  When I am weak, then I am strong.

When life feels hard and overwhelming, as it inevitably will, remember that “falling down is part of life, getting back up is living”. There will likely be those who will try to kick you when  you’re down, but there is always someone with an outstretched hand to help you back up.  And the most courageous thing you can say in that moment is “Help me.”  Even if you don’t say it with words, just accept it.  And eventually you will see the strength in that.  And you will go forth and offer that hope to others.

Epilogue: This week I finished the book that I referenced in this post. And I was reminded that with every story’s end, a new story begins.  This part of my story couldn’t end until I’d told it.  It’s time for me to go forward and tell another story.

Near the end of the book Cheryl writes: “…I’d spend hours imagining how it would feel to be back in the world where food and music, wine and coffee could be had.  Of course, heroine could be had there too, I thought.  But the thing was, I didn’t want it.  Maybe I never really had.  I’d finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.”

Instead of an escape, instead of a way out, it’s time to tell the story of finding a way IN.

“Every time I fall there’ll be those who will call me a mistake, but that’s ok…’Cause I hear a voice and he calls me redeemed, when others say I’ll never be enough” ~Mercy Me