I'm willing to bet that the most common question exchanged between two people is "How are you doing?" Especially here in the South, it's kind of a standard greeting whether you know a person or not. "Hey" or "hi" rolls very nicely right into "How are you doing?" I'm also willing to bet that the answer to that question is the second most common lie that people say (Saying that you've read the terms and conditions doesn't count here.). The most common lie? The answer to "Are you okay?" Why do I think that? Because that question is usually prompted by a person noticing that the subject is not actually okay, and the subject has no desire to admit that they are not okay. Typically if someone isn't doing okay, and they want you to know, they'll just tell you.
So this is me finally telling everyone that no...I'm not really okay. Before you all start freaking out, my physical health is perfectly fine. I haven't recently discovered any major problems there. The problem I'm having has more to do with my mind, my spirit, and my heart (the figurative one).
The truth is, I haven't been okay for a while. Most of the people who have only met me since I moved south, still don't know the real me. I've been strolling along just fine for several months now without anybody realizing it until the past couple of weeks. In order to explain how I've not been okay, I'm about to walk down a path of words that might make some of you uncomfortable, but it's who I am, and it's the truth.
Most people who read this are probably well aware that I am a Christian. And for those of you who may not know me personally, stop stereotyping me in your head. I've been following Christ since I was about 18 or 19. I'm not one of those people that knows the exact moment that I gave my life to Christ. It was more of a gradual process for me. Life hasn't always been peachy for me, and in fact, at times, it was downright rough, and I'm a firm believer that it is only by the grace of God that I've become the person I am today.
However...lately, God and I have not been on good terms. In fact, I've been flat out pissed off at Him. I spent three years of my life practically ignoring everything and everyone in it except for my journey to become a teacher. Between work, classes, student teaching, and very little sleep, I didn't have time for anything else, often including even my husband. But I barreled through those three years and came out on the other side with my Masters of Education and a 4.0 GPA. Looking back on it, I don't know how I survived some of it except to believe that God carried me through.
And now here I am, approaching the second school year post grad school, and I'm still not a teacher. I spent most of the past school year subbing. Let's be clear about something subbing is not teaching. It's babysitting en masse. The pay is terrible. The reliability stinks. You don't always know what you're getting into, and often times the behavior of the students depend more on their normal teacher than it does on your ability to control them. The further into the school year I went, the more anxiety I had. Then when March rolled around and teaching jobs for the 2013-2014 school year started popping up, I gained a little bit of hope. But then, with each interview that didn't lead to a job, I felt more rejection, and more like a failure than ever before. And that's where I stand now.
To put so much of your time, energy, money, and life towards achieving a goal only to find that goal out of reach is one of the most humbling things a person can experience, and for a long time I thought that's what this whole thing was about: humbling me. I thought maybe I was getting too arrogant about my academic achievements, and God thought it was time to show me that I'm not as great as I think I am. And although there might be some truth in that belief, I'm pretty sure it's mostly wrong. That just isn't how God rolls.
So after much toiling, and a gradually deeper descent into anxiety, depression, and social isolation, the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a wake up call. I got myself into a very dark place. I was venturing into the territory of not being a functional human being. I stopped doing housework. I stopped trying to spend time with people. I only went to church when I was scheduled as a volunteer and even then I tried to avoid people. I had become a miserable excuse for a human being. Luckily for me, someone finally noticed. And she called me out on it. We met a week later for dinner where I spilled my guts to her, and she spoke a lot of difficult truth to me that I desperately needed to hear. That started the process of pulling me out of this pit. Then yesterday, someone else took notice and called me out on my crap by relaying something my husband had said to him.
"I wish you guys could meet her."
I've known these people for several months. He didn't mean it in the literal sense. He meant that they still don't know the real me - the person that I used to be before this mess, the woman that he married. It cut me to the core. But he was right.
So this is me coming clean, telling everyone that no, I haven't been okay for a long time. And I'm sorry for putting up a front and not being real with all of you. That's a crappy thing to do, and y'all don't deserve it. I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this. I guess by writing it down and publicly declaring it, I'll now have dozens of people to hold me accountable. I don't want your pity. There are people who are suffering far more than I can even imagine right now. I just want you all to expect me to be honest and real and to not accept it when I'm not doing so. I'm trying to make a conscious effort to put on my big girl panties and pull myself up by my bootstraps. But the truth is, I can't do it. God has a plan for me and my life, and I have to learn to trust in that and rest in that. He's provided everything we need so far, and I need to just rest in the fact that He'll continue to do just that.
So the answer to the question of "Are you okay?"
No. Not really, but I'll get there.
