Journal of a (previously) depressed Christian

God help me. What am I doing here? I am rubbish.

I want to curl up in a ball and hide. I want to cry my days away, until you whisk me off to be with you forever. I want to go home.

I don’t have it in me Father. Right now, I can’t do it. Please don’t let me fail, don’t let me give up, don’t let me be a quitter. It’s everything I hate. But then right now I hate everything I see in me. I have no future, I’m treading water, achieving nothing and there’s no use for me, no place for me. Everything seems pointless.

I just feel like a waste of space. I am a burnt-out shell. What can I offer anyone? I just take. God, I am crying out to you. Fix me please! This isn’t what you want me to be. A child of God shouldn’t wallow in self-pity.

God I miss you. Please heal me, I’m broken. Nothing makes it better. God, step in. Only you can heal me. Please, I can’t keep on with this stupid, self-centred depression.

These raw words are posted on the ChristChurch London social networking site, The City. Caroline Hardman, 21, has titled the posting Journal of a (previously) depressed Christian.

The musical theatre student is one of the many Britons who have experienced a mental health problem: recent studies by charity Together have found that six out of ten people have had at least one time in their life when they have found it difficult to cope mentally. Caroline said it was not something that happened overnight.

“I think I had had it before it was diagnosed. I was always quite insecure and had this paranoia that people didn’t like me, even my friends. When I moved away to college it was all really stressful and it all really kicked off. Until it was diagnosed I didn’t know what on earth was going on. I thought I was bonkers.”

Although she describes common depression symptoms she said she did not feel she could talk about it.

“I was crying every day. Things that I used to enjoy I found really stressful. I had panic attacks at weird times, to the point where I didn’t want to go out of the house, I didn’t want to get up, I was having to miss college. I finally went on antidepressants and after the side effects settled down it gave me space to deal with the rest of it.”

She describes being a Christian through this time particularly challenging.

“It is almost harder to be a Christian with depression because I felt guilty. Every Christian around me seemed happy even though they probably weren’t. I just thought maybe I am not a good Christian. It was when I stopped feeling guilty and accepted it that I got better. It has not been a steady progression upwards but it has improved a lot.”

Caroline describes the great support her church group and Christian friends were in her life, but wants to ensure that churches are open to talking about how people are really feeling. She posted her journal on the website because she wished she had realised how common depression was at the time.

“People that have problems don’t feel like they can talk about it because everybody else is okay but then you feel like that because no one can talk about it," she said.

"It is a vicious circle. I literally thought I was the only one and it was my fault. Now I am in such a different place. I wanted people to know that you can feel like that and still come out of it. I didn’t think I would.

"Actually if I didn’t have God and key friends around me I don’t know that I would have.”

If you or someone you know has a mental health problem, you can find articles and links on www.mindandsoul.info