I have what some would call a “perfect” life.
I married a really good man. He’s not perfect (who is?), but my gosh, he is wonderful. He makes my life easier, and I know not every woman can say that. I’ve seen marriages where the woman carries it all. That’s not my reality. My husband parents, he cleans, he cooks, he even does the laundry. Again… not perfect, but neither am I.
I have three amazing children. I juggle two jobs that sometimes drive me insane, but I have work, and I’m making money. My husband gets paid well, and for the first time in our marriage, we’re watching the debt go down, retirement go up, and even a few dollars stay in the bank until the next paycheck. That hasn’t always been the case.
And yet… I still have dark days.
Days when my mind drifts into dark places. Days when depression hits so hard, I wonder if I should keep going. And the guilt hits me, because why? Why do I feel this way when I have so much to be thankful for?
The truth is, I’ve battled depression and anxiety since childhood. Growing up in Mexico, in a low-income household with five siblings, there wasn’t space for “mental health.” Nobody had time for depression. But now I can see it for what it was.
The anxiety that left me chewing holes through my clothes (and later my hair, when my mom told me to stop ruining the hand-me-downs). The heaviness in my chest that made it hard to breathe. The rituals, like breathing out every time I spoke so nothing evil could sneak inside me.
As a teenager in the U.S., my family joined a Hispanic Pentecostal church. That’s when things got worse. Depression wasn’t called depression; it was called a demon. Medication? Absolutely not. I believed what they told me: that if I was depressed, I wasn’t godly enough. I was a sinner. I prayed harder, went to church nearly every day, gave away so much of my hard-earned money… and yet, that was the season when I most often felt I was going to hell.
Ironically, now that I no longer belong to that version of Christianity, I feel closest to God. I believe now that He truly loves me, wants health for me, wants joy for me; not just good behavior and tithes.
But here’s the thing: even with my “picture-perfect” family, I still have dark days. Living with depression, even when life looks perfect, is exhausting. I wish there was a switch to turn it off. There isn’t. Instead, I go through it. I wait. I talk to my husband, who holds me, listens, or simply sits with me.
And when I finally come out of it, I breathe deep and thank God for not leaving me in the dark. I pray I’ll always come out, because I want to see my kids grow up. I want to live. I want to laugh. I want my children to know I fought to be present for them, even on the hardest days.
If you’ve ever felt this way, I hope you know you’re not alone. And if you’ve never felt it, I hope you remember this: someone you love may be carrying it quietly. It doesn’t always make sense from the outside, it doesn’t even make sense from the inside. But it’s real.
And we’re here, surviving and living the best we can.
