I Don't Know Happy People-- by Marjorie Corbman God Jesus Christian church faith teen teenager young depression suicide

We're sorry, but this content is no longer available on Beliefnet. You may enjoy the following related articles: Just for Teens Read Beliefnet features for spiritual teens Depression Is Real Help for bereaved teens Prayers for Depression A collection of multifaith prayers 'You Are Truly Blessed' A woman on the verge of suicide receives an angelic blessing Paraclete Press. * I was trying to pull the English muffins out of the toaster when my mom abruptly changed the topic:"By the way, just so you don't say we never tell you anything"—they never tell me anything—"Jessie's starting therapy." * I turn around. * "What?" * I had no doubt that my little sister Jessica was unhappy, but it had been so long since my older sister, Rachel, and I had left therapy that it seemed odd to me that this should start up again. Rachel and I dealt with our depression in our own ways, and have since matured, but Jessie's was quieter, less explicit. * quot;She went to the guidance counselor and said she was suicidal and was cutting herself." * quot;She's not cutting herself. She wears short sleeves and I've seen her legs." * quot;I know," Mom replied as she sat down at the table. * I turned back for the English muffins, and reached for a knife to spread the peanut butter. * quot;I think she's just unhappy," I decided, my finger touching the blunt edge of the metal in my hand, "just like everyone else." * My mom nods because it's true, and the conversation trails off. * Later that night, I go over a mental list of all the happy people that I know. I try to think of someone my age not tainted by a sort of existential angst, not attempting to cope with profound feelings of despair and abandonment. The few I can think of I don't know well enough to be sure of. It suddenly hits me that I don't know happy people, that many of my friendships are based entirely on solidarity in a bizarre epidemic of misery. I realize that I have become happier lately—or rather, at peace—and yet this has only led to my listening to my friends vent more. My newfound stability has only served to show me how lost everyone is, and how unstable all the people who are close to me are. * We aren't happy. We take Zoloft and cut open our flesh and do anything to assure us that we're here, that we feel, that our experience is valid and tangible. There's something sick in a culture where prosperity is chased by suicide. We're bored and lonely and we don't care about anything anymore, while we still worship everything. Our emotions are not silly and they are not immature. On the contrary, they are surprisingly mature, and though not all of us have the eloquence to describe the depth of our feelings, nevertheless we feel strongly and in pure concentrations. The problem is not, as has been posited, that we are shallow, but that we cannot be shallow, that our inner experience is too strong to deny, too loud and too demanding. * The teenage years are always years of turmoil. Adolescence has always been a hard time to deal with, so nothing I'm saying is original. But teens today have what other generations had in excess, with some of the exceptional even becoming the norm. We kill ourselves more, we take more drugs and more potent drugs than our parents did. Drugs, suicide attempts, promiscuous sex—it is all an attempt to escape the world around us. Self-mutilation is rampant. In my most despairing days I took the kitchen knife and applied it on myself—never as seriously as with others I know, but because I was empty, unhappy, always wanting to go for the extremes in order to escape the hell I was in. And that's how our generation is—obsession with self-esteem and body image just serves to mirror the fact that, as my friend Lauren once told me, "We all hate ourselves and think we're fat and ugly." * Christians of all time periods have experienced this sorrow of the world, the shadow of the Evil One—the hardest foe to overcome, as it has to do with the self. "There is a useful sorrow," reflected Amma Syncletica of the Desert Fathers, "and a destructive sorrow. Sorrow is useful when we weep for our sins, and for our neighbor's ignorance, and so that we may not relax our purpose to attain to true goodness, these are the real kinds of sorrow. Our enemy adds something to this. For he sends sorrow without reason, which is something called lethargy. We ought always to drive out a sadness like that with prayers and psalms." * Amma Syncletica went out into the desert to meet God. John the Baptist grew up there, and Jesus overcame Satan in its midst. Yet mindless wandering and golden calves are found there too, in an environment of true aridity. God lives there, and so does the Devil. The desert is the holy land because there is nothing. Nothing but you, your cross, and Christ. Evil is there too, and temptation. But we all come out into the desert to be saved. * Being a teenager is, in a sense, to be deserted—the world of childhood no longer applies and yet it is impossible to face reality yet. It is a time when despair, confusion, and loneliness are intensified—it is a great spiritual drought, and it is in the greatest spiritual drought that we find God. He comes to us in the most profound sadness, in the most unspeakable grief. He wipes away every tear from our eyes and gives us hope, and we know Him because we have been brought into the depths. * My generation is ready for Him. * My friends tell me they're empty, and I don't know what to say. I know what it's like to be empty Our god is the person or thing we think the most about—whether it be God Himself or a crush or a celebrity or a cause or a book or an object or an ideology. My friends and I chose to worship anything—everything—in order to fill the gap that leaves us empty and unfulfilled. We are made to have every desire satisfied, and it is for this purpose that we have been born. But in a world without direction, worldly sorrow devours us who are slaves to those who by nature are not gods. * I've come out into the desert to meet God. To some, this looks like escape from the world—my beliefs, a break from reality; my aspirations, unrealistic and avoidant. But this is an escape from hell to real life, and life in abundance. I've come alone; I've left everything behind, everyone whom I previously worshiped, everything that I have been attached to. Silently and cautiously I have fallen before His cross, the sky bruised with a sunset and the ground harsh and uninviting. I have fled from the crowd to venerate an instrument of a painful and terrible death, and to find peace in the injustice of the death of my God. I have come here not to greet favors, security, or consolations. I have come here to share in this death, not because I want anything but because I love Him, and because He loves me. * When I cry my grief is deeper than it has ever been, and yet I am not depressed. Though I am constantly at war, I am not afraid. I am not always happy, but I am drenched in wisdom and truth. * So I explain this to my friends. I tell them that I'm not unhappy anymore—sometimes I'm stressed, but I have a constant presence with me, a constant escape that isn't desperate, isn't chaotic, but is the only thing that is real. Now that I have found it, I realize that everything else seems like an escape to me; everything else seems like shadows and illusions compared to the very real experience of encountering God. -->