Loneliness

Sometimes the hardest mirror to face isn’t the one on the wall.
It’s the one that quietly asks,
When did we start looking so tired? How did the tiredness and suffering affected us to this extent ? How can our eyes look so sad that this much ? How was our heart able to carry all of that ?
There was a time when we thought we were simply getting older.
But one day we look at the mirror or in front of the camera and realize that it wasn’t only time.
It was years of surviving.
Years of antidepressants.
Years of sleepless nights.
Years of responsibilities.
Years of carrying, living and facing things our hearts and souls weren’t never supposed to carry alone, however the conditions forced us to carry, live and face them alone, as if we’re thrown and forgotten in this world, and even we weren’t able to imagine that there’s nothing in this huge universe that can listen and help us

And after years suddenly we look at the mirror and see that our hair became white and it quietly disappeared, the scars remained on our skin and our eyes are no longer looked as light as they once did.

And we wonder how much of what we see is age… and how much of it is simply everything we’ve survived not only the pain, suffering sadness and loneliness but also but also to try to keep
Our ability to hope.
Our ability to pray.
Our ability to believe that one ordinary morning life might finally become lighter.

And the hardest feeling while we’re trying to keep all of that is when we see the people outside are

In love
Achieving their dreams
Getting married
Building homes
Having children
Planning vocations
And doing everything they want to do easily and without any complications while we’re staying still or simply trying to survive one more ordinary day.
Maybe surviving was our greatest achievement.
Even if nobody noticed.
Even if we ourselves forgot to be proud of it.
Suffering changes the body in quiet ways.
It steals sleep.
It changes appetite.
It leaves scars on the skin.
It steals hair.
It teaches the eyes a sadness they never asked to learn.
Sometimes we stop recognizing the person in the mirror.
Not because we became strangers…
but because life happened faster than we were able to heal.
Yet there is something suffering could never completely take away.
The small part of us that still waits.
The part that still believes peace exists somewhere.
The part that still prays.
The part that still smiles when a child laughs.
When a bird lands nearby.
When a cat decides to trust us.
When someone unexpectedly smiles and ask,
“How are you?”
and genuinely waits for the answer.
Perhaps that fragile hope is the strongest part of us.
Not because it never breaks…
but because it keeps returning.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Maybe one day the mirror will still show white hair.
Maybe the scars will still be there.
Maybe the tiredness around our eyes will never disappear completely.
But perhaps we’ll stop seeing those things as signs that life defeated us.
Perhaps they’ll become quiet reminders that we survived days we once believed would destroy us.
Not everyone who carries scars lost the battle.
Some of us are simply carrying proof that we stayed.
And maybe that is enough for today.

#Depression #BipolarDisorder #Anxiety #Grief

Sometimes the hardest mirror to face isn’t the one on the wall.
It’s the one that quietly asks,
When did we start looking so tired? How did the tiredness and suffering affected us to this extent ? How can our eyes look so sad that this much ? How was our heart able to carry all of that ?
There was a time when we thought we were simply getting older.
But one day we look at the mirror or in front of the camera and realize that it wasn’t only time.
It was years of surviving.
Years of antidepressants.
Years of sleepless nights.
Years of responsibilities.
Years of carrying, living and facing things our hearts and souls weren’t never supposed to carry alone, however the conditions forced us to carry, live and face them alone, as if we’re thrown and forgotten in this world, and even we weren’t able to imagine that there’s nothing in this huge universe that can listen and help us

And after years suddenly we look at the mirror and see that our hair became white and it quietly disappeared, the scars remained on our skin and our eyes are no longer looked as light as they once did.

And we wonder how much of what we see is age… and how much of it is simply everything we’ve survived not only the pain, suffering sadness and loneliness but also but also to try to keep
Our ability to hope.
Our ability to pray.
Our ability to believe that one ordinary morning life might finally become lighter.

And the hardest feeling while we’re trying to keep all of that is when we see the people outside are

In love
Achieving their dreams
Getting married
Building homes
Having children
Planning vocations
And doing everything they want to do easily and without any complications while we’re staying still or simply trying to survive one more ordinary day.
Maybe surviving was our greatest achievement.
Even if nobody noticed.
Even if we ourselves forgot to be proud of it.
Suffering changes the body in quiet ways.
It steals sleep.
It changes appetite.
It leaves scars on the skin.
It steals hair.
It teaches the eyes a sadness they never asked to learn.
Sometimes we stop recognizing the person in the mirror.
Not because we became strangers…
but because life happened faster than we were able to heal.
Yet there is something suffering could never completely take away.
The small part of us that still waits.
The part that still believes peace exists somewhere.
The part that still prays.
The part that still smiles when a child laughs.
When a bird lands nearby.
When a cat decides to trust us.
When someone unexpectedly smiles and ask,
“How are you?”
and genuinely waits for the answer.
Perhaps that fragile hope is the strongest part of us.
Not because it never breaks…
but because it keeps returning.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Maybe one day the mirror will still show white hair.
Maybe the scars will still be there.
Maybe the tiredness around our eyes will never disappear completely.
But perhaps we’ll stop seeing those things as signs that life defeated us.
Perhaps they’ll become quiet reminders that we survived days we once believed would destroy us.
Not everyone who carries scars lost the battle.
Some of us are simply carrying proof that we stayed.
And maybe that is enough for today.

#Depression #BipolarDepression #Anxiety #Grief

Some people think that healing arrives all at once.

But for me I no longer believe that.

I think healing arrives the same way dawn does.

Very slowly.

So slowly that, for a while, you are convinced the night will never end.

There were years when we thought we were only surviving.

Years of carrying responsibilities that no one could see.

Years of saying, “It’s okay,” while something inside us was quietly breaking, and our hearts wanted to shout but we even didn’t have a voice to shout, the shouting itself felt useless while we were seeing the whole world moves and we’re staying still we don’t know why the sun rises or for whom ! The people outside are happy and achieving their dreams and we look at our lives and conditions and feel that we’re forgotten and thrown alone

But despite everything we learned how to continue.

To wake up.

To go to work.

To smile.

To answer questions.

To pray.

And to try to keep moving even when we’re not able to talk, walk and while we start and end the day with antidepressants, that we feel it turned us out to be dulls with no emotions or ability to know where we were ? Where we’re? And where we will be ?

And while wondering who would feed the tiredness inside us.

The Life has taken people we loved.

It has closed doors that we believed were meant for us.

It has left us standing in places where we never imagined we would remain for even in the most horrible nightmares

There were moments when we questioned everything.

Not belief.

Not hope.

Just the road itself.

We kept asking ourselves whether we were walking toward something…

or simply walking because stopping was no longer an option.

And yet…

Somehow, we never became bitter.

Life taught us that pain can make us harder.

But it can also make us gentler.

If we decided not to allow the pain and suffering to reach anyone else and to be stopped once they reach our home

If we decided to broke the cycle and say we wouldn’t ever do for anyone what we once hated being done for us

It can teach us to recognize loneliness in someone else’s eyes.

To speak more softly.

To judge less.

To appreciate ordinary mornings.

A cup of coffee with someone you love.

A quiet street.

The sound of birds.

A cat waiting for its dinner.

A phone call from your mother.

Things that once seemed too ordinary to notice.

Perhaps that is what suffering gave us.

Not answers.

Just different eyes.

We no longer dream of a perfect life.

We dream of a peaceful one.

A life where we can sleep few hours peacefully without any distractions or nightmares

A life where we can wake up without carrying yesterday on our shoulders.

A life where we can walk because we want to walk not because it’s forced on us and we had no choice but to keep walking

A place that finally feels like home.

People who choose to stay.

Love that does not need to be chased.

Conversations that do not exhaust the soul.

Maybe none of these things arrive tomorrow.

Maybe some of them never arrive at all.

But we have learned something.

Hope is not believing that everything will happen exactly as we imagined.

Hope is continuing to walk with an open heart, even after life has given us countless reasons to close it.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds.

I don’t know which country or place we will call home.

I don’t know which dreams will come true and which ones will quietly disappear.

But I know this.

After everything life has asked of us…

We still choose kindness over bitterness.

Compassion over judgment.

Faith over despair.

And we’ll keep trying to respond the same way every time despite everything

And perhaps that is already a quiet kind of victory.

So if you are carrying something heavy today…

Keep walking.

Not because life is easy.

But because somewhere ahead, there may be a morning that makes every difficult step worth taking.

And if that morning comes…

I hope we recognize it.

Because sometimes peace doesn’t arrive with fireworks.

Sometimes it arrives as an ordinary day…

that no longer hurts.

Or where there’s someone finally arrive and meet you as you’re and choose to stay not because we’re perfect but because he saw something inside us

I think that when we have beauty inside us one day or another someone will see us his way

And with all the sadness, pain and suffering which we carry we decided to keep trying and we chose to live even if everything decided to kill us we’ll stay alive and hoping for peace, love and compassion to govern everything

And that’s it …..

#Depression #BipolarDepression #Grief #Anxiety

Some people think that healing arrives all at once.

But for me I no longer believe that.

I think healing arrives the same way dawn does.

Very slowly.

So slowly that, for a while, you are convinced the night will never end.

There were years when we thought we were only surviving.

Years of carrying responsibilities that no one could see.

Years of saying, “It’s okay,” while something inside us was quietly breaking, and our hearts wanted to shout but we even didn’t have a voice to shout, the shouting itself felt useless while we were seeing the whole world moves and we’re staying still we don’t know why the sun rises or for whom ! The people outside are happy and achieving their dreams and we look at our lives and conditions and feel that we’re forgotten and thrown alone

But despite everything we learned how to continue.

To wake up.

To go to work.

To smile.

To answer questions.

To pray.

And to try to keep moving even when we’re not able to talk, walk and while we start and end the day with antidepressants, that we feel it turned us out to be dulls with no emotions or ability to know where we were ? Where we’re? And where we will be ?

And while wondering who would feed the tiredness inside us.

The Life has taken people we loved.

It has closed doors that we believed were meant for us.

It has left us standing in places where we never imagined we would remain for even in the most horrible nightmares

There were moments when we questioned everything.

Not belief.

Not hope.

Just the road itself.

We kept asking ourselves whether we were walking toward something…

or simply walking because stopping was no longer an option.

And yet…

Somehow, we never became bitter.

Life taught us that pain can make us harder.

But it can also make us gentler.

If we decided not to allow the pain and suffering to reach anyone else and to be stopped once they reach our home

If we decided to broke the cycle and say we wouldn’t ever do for anyone what we once hated being done for us

It can teach us to recognize loneliness in someone else’s eyes.

To speak more softly.

To judge less.

To appreciate ordinary mornings.

A cup of coffee with someone you love.

A quiet street.

The sound of birds.

A cat waiting for its dinner.

A phone call from your mother.

Things that once seemed too ordinary to notice.

Perhaps that is what suffering gave us.

Not answers.

Just different eyes.

We no longer dream of a perfect life.

We dream of a peaceful one.

A life where we can sleep few hours peacefully without any distractions or nightmares

A life where we can wake up without carrying yesterday on our shoulders.

A life where we can walk because we want to walk not because it’s forced on us and we had no choice but to keep walking

A place that finally feels like home.

People who choose to stay.

Love that does not need to be chased.

Conversations that do not exhaust the soul.

Maybe none of these things arrive tomorrow.

Maybe some of them never arrive at all.

But we have learned something.

Hope is not believing that everything will happen exactly as we imagined.

Hope is continuing to walk with an open heart, even after life has given us countless reasons to close it.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds.

I don’t know which country or place we will call home.

I don’t know which dreams will come true and which ones will quietly disappear.

But I know this.

After everything life has asked of us…

We still choose kindness over bitterness.

Compassion over judgment.

Faith over despair.

And we’ll keep trying to respond the same way every time despite everything

And perhaps that is already a quiet kind of victory.

So if you are carrying something heavy today…

Keep walking.

Not because life is easy.

But because somewhere ahead, there may be a morning that makes every difficult step worth taking.

And if that morning comes…

I hope we recognize it.

Because sometimes peace doesn’t arrive with fireworks.

Sometimes it arrives as an ordinary day…

that no longer hurts.

Or where there’s someone finally arrive and meet you as you’re and choose to stay not because we’re perfect but because he saw something inside us

I think that when we have beauty inside us one day or another someone will see us his way

And with all the sadness, pain and suffering which we carry we decided to keep trying and we chose to live even if everything decided to kill us we’ll stay alive and hoping for peace, love and compassion to govern everything

And that’s it …..

#Depression #BipolarDepression #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Grief

I have often wondered whether fear is something we inherit or something we discover. Children are afraid of monsters beneath the bed because they imagine teeth and claws waiting in the dark. Adults become afraid of hospitals because they have learned that horror rarely announces itself with glowing eyes or dripping fangs. It arrives politely, wearing a name badge, carrying a clipboard, and assuring you that everything is under control. I have never been especially frightened by abandoned buildings, cemeteries, or lonely roads at midnight. Yet every time I see an old canvas straitjacket displayed in a museum or tucked away in a photograph from another era, I feel an uneasiness that is difficult to explain. Most people see restraints. I see silence.

Language has always lived in my hands. They are not simply tools that happen to accompany my thoughts. They are my thoughts. They tell stories before I even realize I have one to tell. They reveal frustration, excitement, humor, grief, and affection long before my face catches up. They have carried conversations across crowded rooms, introduced me to strangers, comforted friends, and built an entire life that could never fit inside spoken words. Asking me to stop using my hands would feel no different than asking someone else to stop breathing whenever they wished to speak.

That is why the jacket unsettles me. It does not merely immobilize the arms. It removes the one thing I have relied upon every day to exist among other people. I imagine the sleeves crossing over my chest while someone tightens the leather straps one buckle at a time. The canvas presses against my wrists until my fingers disappear into the long sleeves, and suddenly the room changes. Everyone else still has a language. Mine has been folded inward where no one can see it. The silence that follows is not the peaceful silence I have known all my life. It is the suffocating silence of words trapped inside a body that no longer has a way to release them.

Whenever I let that thought linger, the nightmare begins to unfold on its own. I picture myself sitting in an old psychiatric hospital, the sort that appears in faded black-and-white photographs with long corridors, polished tile floors, and windows so tall they seem to belong to another century. Nurses move quietly from room to room while doctors gather around clipboards discussing patients in calm, reassuring voices. They are not cruel people. In fact, that is what makes the dream unbearable. They genuinely believe they are helping. They smile at me. They nod with sympathy. They ask questions I cannot answer because every reply begins in hands that are no longer available to me.

At first I try to improvise. My shoulders move. My eyebrows lift. My mouth forms words that no one understands. Every instinct I possess searches for another path to communication, but each attempt ends with puzzled expressions from people who mistake my desperation for confusion. One doctor quietly writes that I seem agitated. Another suggests increasing the medication. A nurse gently pats my shoulder as though reassurance might replace language. None of them realize that I am trying to explain exactly what is happening, and none of them notice that the harder I struggle to communicate, the more convinced they become that I cannot.

The hospital itself begins to change after midnight. Nothing dramatic happens at first. The fluorescent lights seem just a little dimmer than they were before. The shadows along the hallway stretch farther than they should, and the polished floor reflects the ceiling with such perfect clarity that it becomes difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. I notice movement beyond the doorway, but whenever I focus on it, the hallway appears empty again. The building feels less like a place occupied by people and more like a place remembering people.

Eventually the figures reveal themselves, not as ghosts, but as hands wandering through the corridors without the rest of their bodies. They move with remarkable grace, crossing the floor on their fingertips before climbing walls and disappearing across the ceiling as effortlessly as spiders. None of them appear threatening. Some are old and wrinkled, others impossibly young, and each carries its own quiet personality in the way it moves. They gather outside my room and begin signing to one another with extraordinary beauty, their conversations flowing so naturally that I almost forget they have no arms attached to them. Watching them fills me with relief at first because, for the first time since the nightmare began, I can understand someone completely.

Then I realize none of them are signing to me.

I wave as best I can, forcing my shoulders forward against the canvas. I try to catch their attention with my eyes, with my face, with anything that remains under my control. They continue their conversations without noticing I exist. Hundreds of hands pass my doorway discussing memories, arguments, family dinners, childhood stories, and simple everyday moments that have somehow survived after everything else disappeared. I understand every word they sign, yet I cannot contribute a single sentence. I have become a spectator to the language that once belonged to me.

The horror finally settles over me with a weight heavier than the restraints themselves. The jacket has not stolen my ability to understand. It has stolen my ability to be understood. I am surrounded by language, immersed in it, watching it flow past like a river while standing on the shore unable to step inside. The ghosts are not the wandering hands outside my room. The ghost is me, sitting silently in the middle of a conversation that will continue forever without ever knowing I was there.

When I wake, my first instinct is always the same. I lift my hands into the morning light and simply watch them move. I do not sign anything important. There is no audience waiting to receive my words. I only need to see them moving freely again because, for a few lingering moments after the dream has faded, I can still feel the weight of canvas around my wrists and remember what it was like to lose not my freedom, but my voice.

Epilogue

Every now and then I wake before sunrise and instinctively lift my hands into the faint light, flexing my fingers just to reassure myself they are still free. I laugh at the habit, shake my head, and remind myself that it was only another nightmare. The relief, however, never stays with me for long. Whenever I pass an old hospital, glimpse a museum display, or come across a faded photograph of a forgotten psychiatric ward, my eyes always drift toward the canvas sleeves hanging quietly in the background. I find myself wondering how many people feared the restraints, and how many feared what those restraints would take away.

Eventually I tell myself the same thing I always do. It isn’t real. It can’t happen. It’s just one of those nightmares that keeps gnawing at the back of my mind.

Then, almost without realizing it, I look down at my hands once more, just to make sure they still belong to me.

#MentalHealth #obstacles #Deafness

It’s crazy to me, the assumptions that people automatically make when I divulge that I’m a Christian.

That it was simply the path of least resistance. That I was born into a church-going home and adopted viewpoints that I never questioned. That I’m sheltered, close-minded, and would surely leave the faith if I’d open my eyes.

The truth is, becoming a Christian went against everything my parents taught me. I lost all of my friends. My high school creative writing teacher tried to de-convert me. Nothing in my environment supported my decision. It was hard. I have never regretted it.

I taught a mini sermon on The Book of Ruth Saturday for leadership class at church. What struck me was how Ruth left everything comfortable and familiar in Moab to follow Naomi and be with God’s people. Naomi begged her to stay back. She wanted to spare Ruth the isolation and rejection she would surely face.

Of course, Ruth’s story has a miraculous, very happy ending. But what if she was an outcast in Bethlehem, and died lonely? That would be so sad. But ultimately, she would gain a reward in eternity that would never have happened if she stayed back with Orpah in Moab.

My son shared a message with me today by a woman named Farmer Girl on Facebook. This passage especially struck me:

“Following Christ may cost you comfort. It may cost you popularity. It may cost you opportunities, relationships, or dreams you thought your life would include. For many believers around the world, it still costs their freedom and even their lives.

But it will never cost more than Christ is worth.

The safest place you will ever be is not the place with the fewest problems.

It is the place where you are faithfully walking with the One who has overcome the world.”

#Bipolar #Depression #GAD #OCD # PTSD