Don’t Accept Not Okay

Hello, Lovelies! It has been two years and one month since I wrote and posted anything for this blog. To tell you the truth, I didn’t realize the website was still a website. I’m so grateful that it is. That means this place was just waiting for me to come back when I was ready, and that is a bittersweet thing to be experiencing right now.

I’m going to take some time to be real with you. The last two years have sucked. They were also okay in some ways. But mostly they just sucked. I was optimistic in my last post, trying to sound so happy and hopeful, and that’s just not how things were for me. I was numb, apathetic, pretending to be alive when I wanted to be nothing more than a dust bunny in the corner, and watch the world go by while I tried to get a little bit of dopamine here and there through things that just really didn’t matter to me. Now, I didn’t do drugs or drink or any of those other things that we hear about depressed people getting addicted to during their low points.
Sometimes, we can feel awful without doing anything bad. Sometimes, we just feel awful.

And that’s not okay. It’s not okay to constantly feel like you’re just an ugly sketch on a page. It’s not okay for the world to look flat and unsaturated. It’s not okay to only be doing the minimum and below. It’s not okay to feel nothing. It’s not okay to only be sad.

That was my existence for pretty much all of 2024. And really, it started back in 2022 when I was two years into my bachelor’s with one year left to experience what I considered the best part of my life. That deadline was destroying me, and I let it.
The thing is, people say it’s okay to not be okay. It’s true, in the correct context. There is a stigma against people that we have been fighting against for centuries, that says people who are depressed and unable to function normally aren’t worth the time and space they occupy. That something is wrong with them, and they need to either be fixed or forgotten. This is not true. Just because you aren’t happy or functional does not make you any less valuable than the most proactive billionaire in the world.

But, what we have begun to do with that saying is twist it to mean something else. We have started believing that it’s okay to remain not okay. That is not the truth. We, as human beings and children of God, we who have been bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, we are meant to live. We are meant to thrive. We are meant to experience the world and everything good and bad that comes our way. We are not meant to acknowledge that we are depressed and then stay that way. That is not okay.

But that’s the hard part, isn’t it? To be okay again. That’s the most challenging thing in the world. And getting there will look different for everyone. And, tragically, some people may never get there. But acknowledging that something is bad, to say that being depressed is not okay, is empowering to the person in depression. People who experience chronic depression are not bad human beings because they are depressed. That’s why it’s okay to not be okay. But to say that’s just how life is, is to place that person in a permanent category that they can never rise from. It takes away that hope, to say it’s just how things are.

They’re not. It’s not how things are. We may struggle with being happy, wanted, loved, and so on. But that doesn’t mean we are inherently wrong for it. It just means we live in a fallen world, and it is not meant to be like this. And if it’s not meant to be like this, then there is something we can do about it to make it what it is supposed to be.

Nothing will ever be perfect this side of Heaven. But that doesn’t mean God is only going to allow us to experience that fallen-ness. He did not create this world and the people in it to only feel not okay. He created it with joy, beauty, and love. Which means those things still exist here.

Just because the world is broken doesn’t mean the good pieces are gone. When you break a vase, the shards don’t just disappear. They have spaces between them that weren’t supposed to be there.

I didn’t know I was living in those spaces, that wrongness, until one of my author friends wrote a character struggling with apathy and depression. And I saw myself in that character. Once I could see what was missing, I worked on getting it back.

I needed to feel again.

I needed to feel again, so I let myself mourn over broken dreams that I believe may never happen. I needed to feel again, so I let myself grieve the passing of two of my grandparents and three of my pets. I needed to feel again, so I let myself be angry over my dad leaving my mom. I needed to feel again, so I let myself be sad over my sister getting married and leaving me. I needed to feel again, so I allowed myself to feel awkward about texting my friends. I needed to feel again, so I let myself feel tired when I socialized at all.

And something wonderful happened.

I started feeling joy again. I started wanting again. I started being genuinely happy again. I started to see the good again.

I needed to let myself fall apart. I needed to feel deep, painful sorrow, and cry and snot, so I could feel real again.

Living means experiencing the bad and the good. We cannot have one without the other. Not in this life. Now, I visit my friends regularly. Now, I spend time with my family more. Now, I feel real satisfaction when I complete a task. Now, I am pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Now, I am learning how to be a good tutor. Now, I am writing stories again. Now, I am trusting God again. Now, I am learning what it really means to be me again.

Some days are still so hard. I still feel numb at least half the time. I still stare at things hopelessly and wonder how things could ever be better. I still struggle with challenges and wonder why I’m even trying. I still forget to be sad a lot of days. But I am making progress. I am not staying in the mindset that depression is all there is and nothing I do matters. I feel real life again, more often than I did two years ago, even though it sucks a lot. But those moments of real happiness, real challenge, real fear, and real success are worth it.

My friends are worth it. My family is worth it. And there are a lot of things that are not great right now. But Something that I learned in December 2024, when the last major event that occurred that year was my dad leaving, is that life doesn’t get better. There is no “until.” I used to think, “When big life changes stop for six months, then I’ll be okay.” That is not the case. And when I realized that, I started finding those little things to be happy about. And that led to bigger things to be happy about. It allowed me to be open to unlikely lessons from my friend’s character, and so many more sources of growth along the way.

Thank you for reading this very long post. I hope it encourages you somehow. It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay to accept nothing more.

Love y’all

~Beth