“I’M DEPRESSED.” Who knew those two words in a blog post would generate more than 500 responses? Harvard MBAs, corporate executives, stay-at-home moms, students, and pastors posted comments on my Facebook page.
My friend DeAnn, who has been wrestling with chronic fatigue for decades, responded, “Greg, when you share your struggles, I feel less alone in mine.”
Another friend, whose young husband died of cancer early in their marriage, wrote, “Greg, thanks for sharing that. It’s helpful to know someone else is being real about the difficulties of life.
A church elder, father, husband, and corporate executive told me in a private message, “I don’t often struggle with depression, but I frequently struggle with anxiety. The older I get, the weaker I feel.”
Struggles. We all have them. But far too often, we choose to put up facades. (I know because I lived that way for 46 years.) We hide tough times in our marriages. We camouflage drug problems or issues with alcohol. We cloak anger, grief, and financial difficulties. We don’t want to talk about stuff like that because stuff like that makes us feel broken and that there’s something distinctively wrong with us. So, we hole up behind the facades of our perfectly painted front doors—and we spend a lot of time and energy trying to make others believe we have it all together.
The truth? No one has it all together, and when we pretend we do, anxiety increases and life becomes even more challenging. After wrestling with cancer for five years, I’ve discovered everyone is broken. Everyone is struggling with something.
Far too often, we are clueless about what’s going on behind our neighbors’ perfectly painted front doors. We have this mental image of “Ozzie and Harriet” happiness, but real life is more like the television drama “This is Us.” Life is messy. Complicated. Confusing. Hard.
Our neighbors struggle with all sorts of things—suicide attempts, bankruptcy, illness, battles with relatives, babies lost before birth, addictions. The challenges go on and on.
For a bit of context, I wrote that depression blog because nausea associated with chemo wasn’t easing up. My energy level was rock bottom. Of course, it didn’t help that it had been raining in Middle Tennessee for well over a week. I was in a downward spiral. I didn’t feel inspired to write anything uplifting. On that rainy January day, I truly was depressed.
I wrote that Facebook post twice, erasing the first draft because I didn’t want to sound like a whiner. Later, the same thought about depression hit me again, so I rewrote the post and just put it out there.
And you know what? Getting those 500 responses opened my eyes and made me feel less alone. See, when we admit that we’re fractured, in one way or another, others will risk being vulnerable too. But someone must break the ice. Someone must be vulnerable first. Someone must admit, “I’m struggling.”
Out of the Blue Book Cover
~ By Greg Murtha. Gret is the author of Out of the Blue—The Unexpected Adventure of a Life Interupted which released posthumously from Clear Day Media on Sept. 1, 2017.
Excerpt from “Out of The Blue: The Unexpected Adventure of Life Interrupted” by Greg Murtha. Published By: Clear Day Media. Used with permission.
