Sometimes, anxiety makes you feel alone. Correction: most of the time, Anxiety makes you feel alone. It does with me anyway. Growing up, I had always been the strong person in my family. I was strong for my sisters when things were tough, I was strong for my friends when they were hurting and sooner or later it just became a part of me that I didn’t know how to turn off. Being strong, or being tough, became a part of how I functioned and apart of who I was. When my anxiety and depression hit, I found it so much harder to be able to be strong for everyone else around me. Everything became so much harder. Sometimes it was hard to just get out of bed, take a shower and brush my teeth. I needed an outlet. I couldn’t workout or be physically active due to a few reasons and if I had continued to bottle up all my emotions and hide them from everyone, then I eventually would have exploded. So I picked up a pencil one day and just started drawing. I drew how I felt.

I started with the girl.

I felt defeated and full of sorrow.

I drew the girl on her knees. .

I was ashamed of how I felt because I really didn’t know what to do with my emotions. 

I drew the girl’s hair over her face to match how I felt. 

Originally I drew the Girl with her hands over her face. Originally hiding her hands behind her hair. But something didn’t seem right. Something seemed to be missing. I let the Girl sit alone one the page, unfinished, for a few days. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. What was it that was missing? 

 I knew, deep down, that there was more to the drawing that I was creating. After a few days, I returned to the Girl and  I drew the  hands. I have never been very good with drawing hands as they are generally pretty hard to get them right. As a kid, when ever I drew a person I made sure that  his or her hands were hidden behind something. This time, however, I did not hesitate. I stayed with it until the hands were done and the girl was holding on to one of the fingers. She was drawn in pencil, no color yet, so it was easy to change the position of her arms. When It was finished, I sat and stared at it for a few moments. I had not expected what i had drawn when I started days before. I don’t know what I was expecting to draw but it wasn’t this for sure.

My first thought was: “When did I get good at drawing?” I am not trying to brag on my drawing skills, as I am still learning. I just surprised myself at the level this drawing was at because when I drew this, I had not drawn anything in many years. My second thought was “No matter how I feel God is with me and I can hold on to him.” When I started drawing this, I was not in a good place with God. I had almost completely stopped talking to Jesus and felt a lot of anger towards Him whenever I was at church or around my Christian friends or husband. I was angry with Him for allowing my friend to die. I was angry with him for the anxiety that I felt which was partially caused by a number or surgeries I had to have right in a row earlier that year. I was angry that I couldn’t control my emotions anymore. I was angry at how my anxiety and depression made me feel and that I had prayed for God to take it away from me but He hadn’t done that yet. (He still hasn’t by the way. This is something I still deal with.) I wanted to feel like myself again. I wanted to be able to be the strong person I had always been and not be this person who, in my mind, was weak. (Please do not mistake my words for me calling anyone with anxiety or depression weak. This was my mindset about myself, not about others who deal with this.) At this point in time, I felt like God was ignoring me and that I no longer mattered or that he was ashamed of me like I was ashamed of myself. Showed me that my way of thinking was wrong. 

Through my own drawing, God was speaking to me. He was telling me that no matter what I was loved. No matter was I was wanted. No matter what He had me in His hands and I could hold on to him as tightly as possible. The Creator of the universe wanted my attention that day and wanted me to know how much I meant to Him.

Through this drawing, I realized my outlet for how I felt and what to do with my emotions was no longer working out or being active but drawing. I could take a simple piece of paper or canvas and draw or paint how I felt. I no longer had to hold my emotions in and I didn’t have to lay my emotions out on my sleeve any longer. I could, if just for a little bit, feel like myself again. When I draw, the rest of the world seems to fade away and nothing else matters. Its just  me and my pencil and paper laying everything out before my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.