It's easy for me to get depressed at home. I didn't know why it happened for a while, and in retrospect I couldn't figure it out because I was overanalyzing it. I get apathetic, sad, angry, and I just don't care about anything. For a long time, I just dealt with it by getting things done; except for when I wasn't able to even get myself that active. Usually, I ended up drowning myself in a movie or some video games.
This past Thanksgiving break, I had avoided said feeling for most of the break and it was great. But that Saturday it hit again, and again, I was confused and cloudy minded. This time I was going to ask God about it; usually, for praying about such a problem as this I would go to my designated prayer spot on campus, but because I was at home I went to the treehouse instead. In the Gospels, Jesus often goes to a mountaintop or some separate place to pray to God and I've found that getting away from things you surround yourself with in your routines is a good thing.
I started praying to God about this very particular depression that hits me. After a few minutes and some God-directed reflection, I suddenly realized/was told: "You're lonely." It was that simple. Once I got back to the house, I called a friend who God is equipping to be able to empathize with and encourage people through any emotional problem and he did just that.
Two weeks later I was attempting to study for my finals. I got to the library and tried to read my notes, but I just started to cry and I had no idea why it was happening. I went to my secret place, prayed, then called my dad. After some prayer, he asked me about what possible stresses there were and I told him about everything that was going on with me (there was more than just finals). His simple response, with some explaining after, was "You're stressed." I wasn't able to see that with both my tendency to overanalyze and my mind being clouded by the negative feelings.
I started writing this just as a confessional, but I think there's a really good lesson to be taken from this stuff: talk to people about what's wrong, and pray about it. If I know what's wrong I don't have a problem with this (you're reading about this on my blog, aren't you?), but I've discovered that I either don't acknowledge or realize how much stress I'm under or what my feelings really are.
Our emotions can often cloud our minds enough to stop any attempts at clear, objective analysis of our situation. Let someone else into your heart and mind to open the windows, turn some fans on and get all that stink out of there.
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