Tag: depression
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collected thoughts, iii
This one is a little on the more difficult and heavy side. If you’re dealing with your own emotional burdens and reading about someone else’s may make your battle harder, please feel free to close out the tab and come back another time. But if you have space somewhere to help me bear this, I’d…
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the year of letting go || pt. i
— falling — The spring semester of 2019 found me putting up a busy and smiley facade while plodding through one of the lowest lows I’d experienced to that point. After a couple years of thinking my only mental battle was generalized anxiety, I was suddenly also diagnosed with mild to moderate clinical depression. I’d…
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weekend fragments
I remember getting mad at God when he asked me to obey and I did and I ended up getting my heart broken because I did the right thing. It turns out that happens a lot. Jesus called his disciples straight into a storm and asked them to trust him. In the end he calmed…
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coffee lies
I’ve drunk coffee three afternoons in a row and that hasn’t happened since my last major mental breakdown. I know it’s bad for me. I know when the time comes to fall blissfully to sleep my heart will race and convince me there are even more things to be afraid of than usual. I know…
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Days 45 – 49
Day 45: Reflections on memory Just before chapel I sit in the garden by the river. I do some homework, read, listen to music, and my heart is calm. A little light creeps into my heavy body and lifts it for a moment. T.S. Eliot writes in “Little Gidding” that memory is the liberation from…
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Days 41 – 44
Day 41: The difference Magdalen College is quintessential Oxford. We make a short trip there in the morning and some of my classmates lead us in psalm and prayer in the very chapel C.S. Lewis would worship in. Our voices rise to the ceiling and reverberate against the carefully stained glass and stone walls. We…
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Days 37 – 40
Day 37: Intrusive We walk. My friends remind me of their presence in various ways: a touch, a brief hug, a wave. They lift my eyes from the ground, my twisted hands, and try to tell me they see me. Dreams, all of them. Just dreams. I’m on the verge of tears but I don’t…
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Days 30 – 36
Day 30: Flowers in your hair Today is about capturing the little moments happening on this big, big span of cliffs. Of individuals losing themselves in the grandeur of the sky, the sea, the space. Of getting lost and somehow still stumbling out of the forest and onto the main road (if it can even…
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Days 25 – 28
Day 25: Longing for a home I wander off into the National Gallery, lost in music and beautiful art. Several paintings remind me of my mother: Renoir’s portrait of a woman reclining in a long chaise and cradling a sleeping puppy in her arms, Eugene Carriere’s “Winding Wool,” Elizabeth Louise Vigee le Brun’s “Self Portrait…
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Day 9 – Getting Through
From the journal: “Why can’t I enjoy a warm, summer day? Am I so numb and apathetic that I can’t be invested in pursuing joy and finding contentment in things that once made my heart sing and set my mind free? Am I so tired that I can still feel sad on days like this?…
Eliana Chow 