How it comes together

I have had three episodes of depression in my life. This was the first one.

Before that, once or twice a year everything that I was tamping down would spill over and I would be crying and angry for a few days. Then, having gotten some of it out of my system, I could go back to functioning normally. I was completely aware that the things that I was sad and angry about were things that were always there, but sometimes I had a temporary loss of the ability to handle it. 

This was different. Instead of an overflow of emotions coming out it from inside, it was at least a perception of outside judgment crushing me down. I was still able to pull myself together to go to appointments and teach; those were good distractions from the darkness inside but the respite was only temporary. Possibly it being so new made it feel more hopeless. I definitely did not know what to do.

I didn't associate it with the incidents in the previous post; that literally only happened this year when I was looking at some other stuff. Once I had the thought it made sense, but up until then it had all been a mystery.

The information in the previous posts matters for a lot of reasons. You can hurt people without meaning to. You might only mean to bug them a little when you end up devastating them. That is one reason kindness is so important.

Yes, my father kind of was trying to devastate me when he disowned me the first time, but -- and it took me a long time to understand this -- that was on him, not me. Understanding when it is you and when it is someone else and when it is partly both is a big part of healing.

I looked competent (which was mostly true) and confident (somewhat less true). I was also the person who'd had a sense of something being wrong about me that predates my earliest memories, but with many memories of that sentiment being reinforced.

I would sometimes be caught of guard by this wave of nausea, and a feeling that there was something disgusting about me or around me, that I couldn't trace or explain. Upon returning to college I would take a class on the French novel, and Sartre's La Nausée was in there. It didn't explain my problems, and his understanding of it was different from mine, even now, but it was interesting to know that it wasn't just me.

I did mention it to one of my companions. She said it probably wasn't anything to worry about -- just Satan -- and it didn't happen that often. Regardless, none of my companions knew how deep some of the hurt inside me was. I didn't know myself, how could they? The most common feedback I got during that part of my life was that I was like a rock. People would feel all this strength emanating from me. That was true, but I was also vulnerable.

Similarly, I did not know about Sister M's previous trauma, or that things in Modesto were reminding her of it. I am not sure that finding out sooner would have kept me from that one correction, because it seemed pretty harmless. She was on a trajectory where things were going to spill over anyway, though in some ways it might have gone down differently. Honestly, things could have been worse.

There are a lot of things that are hard about being a missionary; they aren't reasons not to go. (They might be reasons to have some experience with real life and jobs and to get out of the bubble before you go.) So, that two consecutive young missionaries found me lacking... it's not really their fault that they were wrong. (But they were indisputably wrong. I stand by that.)

For Sister W, the color thing was pretty stupid, but for someone who valued being cute and bubbly so much, it may have been a burden being fat (which she was). Maybe another fat sister who was well-liked and cheerful and appeared confident seemed like a threat. She could have been a mean girl in school (sadly, her church membership does not guarantee that she wasn't). She may have had disappointed feelings about not being married. There was still some stigma that sister missionaries were girls who couldn't get married. 

Mind you, I am not criticizing her for being fat, and I have a lot of sympathy for it messing with someone's head. I am against being mean because of it. With that said, I feel so much better having been a little mean about her. I realize I have known a lot of people like her, and I could be fine never thinking about her again, but I am glad that I posted about her sucking first. It appears to be part of the healing openly acknowledging that in this way, she sucked. Sue me!

That just leaves that early experience at the MTC, and then those two sisters waiting outside the door while I stubbornly tried to ensure that we could have a productive day. Those are the "100% obedience" cases. There are some specific things I need to get into there, but that will be next week.