A Candle in the DarknessYou can’t always pray your way out

MY name is Crystal. I learned in a networking workshop that you shouldn’t introduce yourself with “my name is”, but except for the fact that I got 200 business cards printed with Crystal Abraham, Educator, nothing from that workshop really stuck, and now I have 180 business cards in my desk drawer. When I’m not in the classroom, I’m writing, and one day I’ll finish the next great West Indian novel. I’m 33, childless, and unmarried, which in some circles (the childful, married ones) is apparently an enviable state.

In reality, it’s mostly lonely. I don’t like bars or nightclubs – once I fell asleep in Zen – but I do enjoy fetes and 3canal. I’m basically healthy, except for the occasional cold, and I’d never taken sick leave until recently, when I was diagnosed with depression.

It took me a long time to accept that I was depressed.

Depression, I believed, was a sign of weakness. To be so consistently sad, all the time, was to be ungrateful for the many gifts God had given to me. The problems I was facing were minimal compared to the burdens of so many others. I have a good job, enough to eat, can afford to go on holidays, a family who loves me, and good friends. I am smart, talented, and not unattractive.

This sadness I was feeling was clearly self-inflicted, indulgent. The isolation I was experiencing was my own doing. I should offer my suffering for the holy souls in purgatory, I should unite my sufferings with those of Jesus on the cross. I should seek the counsel of a priest or a spiritual director. And most of all, I should pray. God heals all wounds, he heals our suffering.

I spoke with a priest, and with some friends. They were sympathetic, and promised to pray for me. Rosaries and mas were said with my intentions in mind. I volunteered to do work with displaced people in the society once a week. I joined the church choir. I started working out every day. I started teaching confirmation in the parish.

My feelings of isolation should have been receding, but they weren’t. I would start crying at my desk, at the gym, during rehearsal, during mass. There would be a few days where I felt less bad, but there was never a day when I felt good. I prayed harder, went to mass every day, lit candles.

Nothing changed

Then thoughts of death started. I would sit on buses and think, “if this bus crashed now…” or stand at intersections and hope that a speeding car would lose control and put me out of my misery. I started googling “painless ways to die,” and Google, ever attentive, would ask me if I was okay, and if I needed to talk someone.

I didn’t. I was talking to God. His hotline was also 24/7. I closed the Google searches and went to bed, disappointed when the sun rose to still be alive.

Part of me suspects I would never take my own life. Suicide is, after all, the only sin you cannot confess. It’s a mortal sin, and if anything had stuck from my 14 years of Catholic schooling, it was that if I died in a state of mortal sin, I would go to hell for all eternity. Living in hell for a definite period was clearly a better option.

I suppose this is where I say that being religious, and my personal quest for holiness, was having a negative impact on my mental health. I thought I could pray my pain away, and had begun seeing my depression as a sin, as a deliberate act against God, rather than an illness. Having sinned, and being truly sorry for my sin, I decided to go to confession.

How confession works is like this: you sit with a priest and you tell him the bad things you’ve done, you talk for a bit about how you can change, and then the priest gives you a penance, which is supposed to help you become a better person, and absolves you of your sins (until the next time). Except for the part where you have to admit you are not perfect, it’s not at all unpleasant. If you’re a reasonable person, you probably haven’t done many too bad things, but you might have failed to do good things, and you might have had bad thoughts. I hadn’t taken my life, but I had thought about it.

My confessor listened to me as I listed my sins, and then was completely silent. He closed his eyes, perhaps in prayer, but definitely in thought. Eventually, he asked if I’d been getting help.

Silence, this time from my side.

“I don’t want to give you as your penance that you go to a doctor. That has to be a decision you make. But I want you to think about it. I think you need help. You are suffering and you cannot continue to do so alone.

“So I want you to pray and see if this could be a way you get help. I will pray for you too.”

A week later, I went to see my GP.

The second instalment of this series will appear on February 19.