Hope is the Through-Thread

It’s been a while since I last shared anything on this blog—over 7 months. When I read the last two posts, I feel like they’re from a different lifetime. I don’t recall the experience of memory loss from ECT in April of this year (the irony!), nor do I remember writing the post previous to that, “Your Pain is Valid.” So much has changed in the last year and a half, though some things have remained staunchly and comfortingly consistent. For that, I am thankful.

Give me a brief moment to give some history and context. Toward the end of 2023, while I was struggling under the weight of a deep depression, I chose to pursue electroconvulsive therapy. In March of 2024, I started the treatment. You can find some details of that experience in my most recent post. I discontinued ECT in mid-May, as it had done its job and quieted the extra noise in my mind enough for me to look at some deeper issues. Since then, I’ve been working through those deeper issues, and God has taught me many, many things.

During this past year and a half, the struggle has seemed insurmountable at times. The past 6 months held the most extended acute pain I believe I have experienced thus far, but I’m coming out on the other side. Every time I slip backward a step or two, I wonder how I’ve survived this bitter agony for so long. The answer, as my husband and I point out to each other often, is God.

I’m finally ready to share some of the things God has done in these past months, so please forgive me if my posts tend more autobiographical for a little while. First, I want to share the below post I wrote on August 22, 2023—about 15 months ago. It conveys the through-thread of my experience in all this.

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August 22, 2023

I've been asking these questions in so many ways. How does one keep going when every step brings pain and every breath carries sorrow? How does one move forward when staying put feels safer?

The past few weeks have been a slow descent for me. I am tired again, beyond tired. I’m hardly able to process the world around me as I pass through it, and everything in me tells me to lie down. It’s not even that my body wants to sleep—I have a hard time drifting off once I do lie down—but my mind demands I cease all activity. Immediately. Hard stop.

Unfortunately, I can’t just “cease all activity.” I have a family and work and many demands of life to juggle, and if I “cease all activity,” those balls would drop and shatter. Yet there are times when breathing feels like too much work. How do I keep going then? How do I move forward?

I wish I knew what causes this experience, and I wish I could find a way to treat it. So far, I’ve only found ways to cope with it. One of those methods of coping involves copious amounts of coffee, which I know can’t be good for me. I’ve tried pushing through without coffee, and I quickly become less than functional. I sit at my desk, stare at the computer screen, and breathe so shallowly I wonder if I’m breathing at all. It is beyond frustrating and emotionally painful. But I must continue with work, so I drink coffee.

It's not coffee, though, that keeps me moving forward. Coffee is a means, not a motivation. When every proverbial step brings mental pain, my brain screaming at me to just stop, I put one foot forward, then another, the another. When every breath brings emotional anguish, I inhale, then exhale, then inhale again. Why?

I don’t know how to put the answer into words. No words seem sufficient. For shorthand, I call it “hope.”