Sometimes the things that tear us down can lead us to freedom. Battling demons within ourselves is a vicious work. We may even get beaten down to a point where we don’t know how to fight anymore. That’s what Allie talks about in her “Adventures in Depression” post on her blog Hyperbole and a Half. If you follow Allie’s blog or take a look at her archives, it’s clear that she’s hilarious. She creates these terribly awesome pictures on her computer and uses them to tell a story.
In this post, as the name implies, she discusses what it was like for her to struggle with depression. I wanted to share this with all of you because of just how well she tells this story about her life. Her sadness seems to come out of nowhere, the impact hitting harder for all that she didn’t see it coming. Then, she carries us through the moments she shamed herself (and although it’s serious, it’s serious in a funny way). The shame starts inside of her, because of what she believes, because of the story she lived, because she thinks she doesn’t deserve to feel the way she feels. And yet, through all of that darkness, she finds freedom. The freedom presents itself in a situation, and she has the option to pursue it or to further cultivate her self-hatred. She chooses freedom. That’s my favorite thing about the post–the way she saves herself. May we all find the courage to do the same.
Happy reading. 🙂
whitney