Depression and Perception

            First off, I apologize for not posting anything for almost half a year. There’s been a lot going on.  I got married two months ago (Yay!), and as those of you who have not gone through the process may surmise, there’s a lot of planning and paperwork that goes into marriage before and after the actual wedding.  

            Anyway, moving on: one thing that I particularly dislike about depression (and to be honest, I don’t like any of it) is that depression takes something logical and transforms it into something irrational. Earlier this week, I wound up in a really low mood because of this phenomenon.  My husband asked me if I’d finished filling out some confounding immigration paperwork on his behalf.  I hadn’t, and immediately my depression grabbed that, along with the fact that my husband is easy-going and filling out the forms is one of the very few things he’s asked of me, and suddenly I was the worst wife ever. Then to support the theory that I’m a terrible wife, my depression started listing all my other shortcomings, only some of which are real.  In the end I journaled my angst before quietly crying myself to sleep because I didn’t want to try to explain my illogical reasoning to my spouse!

            I think depression is both frustrating and strangely interesting because while what I experience through it is real and valid, it is not based in reality.  Most things in life are like that actually.  It seems counter-intuitive, but more often than not what we perceive is not exactly what happened. 

An amusing example of this is when I was younger I had a serious problem with people saying my hair was blonde. I think my issue with such comments came from my learning disability and my resulting lack of confidence in my intelligence.  I don’t think that people who are blonde are stupid, but somehow when people would say that my hair was blonde I would get quite defensive, as if I thought they were questioning my mental capacity, and emphatically exclaim, “My hair is light brown!” As I’ve matured a bit (I still not all that mature), I’ve been able to let go of whatever it was that caused me to be so affronted by being called blonde, which is good because I don’t think my Korean in-laws will every think of me as anything but blonde.

Anyway, it’s really interesting to see that way our perceptions, especially those not based in reality, affect our actions and lives.  I know that I have plenty false perceptions, I still haven’t discovered what they all are, but I want to be able to move forward and work through these demonic delusions until I’m able to live my life seeing myself as I really am.  The scriptures teach us that, “ the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls” (Jacob 4:13).  I find great comfort in knowing that God wants us to have the knowledge He does.  We have to go through repeated effort to obtain and retain it, but ultimately, there’s nothing that God has that he doesn’t want us to have (Romans 8:14-18).  I don’t think I’ll every fully comprehend that in mortality, but I want to understand as much as I can. I also don’t completely understand why God gave me depression, but I do know that I am more humble and more empathetic because of what I’ve gone through with it. There’s a whole lot about life that I don’t understand, but I know that God and His son Jesus Christ do, and sometimes that knowledge has to be enough for me to keep going.