Dear God,
In today’s reading (Isaiah 49: 3, 5), it is written:

The Lord said to me: You are my servant, Israel, through whom I show my glory. Now the Lord has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him; and I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord, and my God is now my strength.

Let me read that last line again: “I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord, and my God is now my strength.”

Warning, God. I’m in a pisser of a mood today, as it is, statistically speaking, the most depressing week of the year (January 21 is the most depressing day on record). As I read that last line, I’m not thinking holy thoughts.
Here’s my beef: I always attribute the good stuff to you, and take ownership of the bad stuff myself. How fair is that? Are you always the strength, love, hope behind my triumphs? So then do I just not tap into them the days I fall? (For which I’m accountable.)
I’m going to give you a little context to my complaint, so you know why I’m angry with you.
Yesterday in the hallway of the office of my current therapist, I run into my former therapist. (I hate it when that happens). My former therapist hands me several pieces of paper—one entitled “My Autobiography” written in, what looks like to me, my junior-high handwriting.
“I thought you’d be interested to read these things now. I’ve been holding on to them, and wanted to return them to you,” she said.

An hour later, when I’m finished with therapist number two, I start reading the pages I wrote when I was 13, in eighth grade:

I can’t keep these feelings in any more. My mom doesn’t understand. She tries but she doesn’t. The world seems terrible to me. Everyone seems greedy. I think I need a psychologist badly. I have to keep busy to stay away from my feelings and lately I haven’t been busy. I have thought about suicide many times. It seems to be always on my mind.

I stopped reading for a little bit and just cried. Picturing myself in the eighth grade—in that hideous pink polyester dress I used to wear (Ohio’s finest fashion)–I just cried. I am still crying. I can’t stop.
Because it confirmed something I’ve suspected all along … that my illness has always been there. I emerged from my mom’s womb with a chemically-whacked brain, a mind that was panicked by the littlest things and obsessed about death, even in preschool.
It wasn’t the birth of David or Katherine that triggered my most severe depression of two years ago like I’ve been explaining to friends. It wasn’t the pituitary tumor that rearranged my hormones in a way that disrupted my moods, like I say to my dental hygienist and others who would gasp at the “bipolar” word.
I was born sick. The proof is now there. I just read it.
As I read through my junior-high journal, my heart hurt. I was in so much pain back then. And the way I blamed myself for all of it makes me now, in retrospect, cry twice as hard.
I want to go back and hold that little Therese in my arms and say “It’s not your fault…..the fact that you have a unique way of processing things ….. it’s not your fault, Honey. It doesn’t mean that you are going to hell (which is what I thought because I was grateful. I didn’t love all of God’s creation. In fact, God’s world often made me miserable.)

I picture myself back then–in my summer swimsuit, or in my First Communion dress—and want to take her in my arms and tell her that she didn’t do anything wrong, like she thought for so long, and still does to a certain extent.
So I guess, God, when I read that passage in the Bible and others like it telling us that you make us new and that you are our strength, I’m angry that you didn’t put your arm around me when I was younger. In some ways, my faith in you and in all the Catholic traditions, added to the weight of my depression because I was always feeling guilty, like I disappointed you at every turn, because I couldn’t being joyous and free, like I thought you wanted me to be.
Now before I’m called a “bitter, whiny, white woman” by a reader (her name starts with “r”), let me just say that I know that my childhood sadness is more recoverable, less traumatic, than many childhood nightmares—of rape, incest, poverty, and so forth. In the big picture (yes, I’ve been watching “Oprah”….I have to say this, puke) I was blessed.
But I’m so damn envious of Eric, who told me his deepest thought in eighth grade was how to get from his house to downtown on his bike, or whether or not he was going to play with Robby; and of my sisters, who could shop for CDs without worrying about the case ending up in a landfill, and what the money it cost would buy a family in Equatorial Guinea.
I’m pissed off that I came out the gates running with one leg, that I was damaged goods before the race even began. And I have no one else to blame but you. So that’s why I’m blaming you.
I know I sound like an ungrateful victim. Victim. Victim. Victim. That’s how Abraham Hicks and Rhonda Byrne would classify me.
But I’m angry, God. That journal of mine made my angry. And I want you to know that.
Given that I work my mental-health program harder than anything else in my life—with therapy, meds, exercise, fish-oil, prayer, support groups, service, vitamins, and so forth—don’t I get just a little bit of the credit? Does every strength of mine always have to be attributed to you?
Okay, now that I’ve told you what’s on my mind, I’ll go and try to listen to what you have to say in response.
Please don’t yell back (or use caps). Remember, you’re the bigger person between us.