The month is currently February 2021, near the end, and I returned home on the 10th of September 2020. The day I returned home was bittersweet. I had heard that being an RM was difficult, I also heard that people freak you out for no reason. The last few months of my mission were physically draining. I felt empty of energy. I felt a very deep and real weariness that was distinct in its constant heaviness. It’s not unusual to be tired as a missionary. However, this feeling was beyond tired. I think the last 16ish months had taken their toll. It wasn’t a weariness full of turmoil - it was more of a restful state full of peace, except I still had to work. This feeling was a blessing - I knew when I returned home I would need to rest a lot. I felt that I should ask my mission president to extend my mission, it was spontaneous and a gut feeling I somewhat immediately followed through on which is strange for me, that’s not usually my style. It didn’t work out to extend a transfer, and I wasn’t too sad about it. My mission was incredibly meaningful to me, but I wouldn’t wish to be back there. The day I returned home I was surprised by my family’s stark and upfront ability to continue on with normal life completely. I knew they loved me and were ecstatic for me to go home, but life was so incredibly normal for them. I unpacked my bags with them as if I had been gone for a simple weekend vacation. My parents went with me to go get released and treated it like they were going to get milk from Walmart. It was startling to me. I finally don’t blame them - I don’t know what they could’ve done differently...they continued to live their lives as they knew... but my life as I knew had ended. So as my parents dropped me off from getting released to actually go get groceries, I entered the front door and was greeted by friends and family with tears leaking down my cheeks. I went to use my parent’s bathroom but instead knelt in front of their giant bathtub to thank God for each and every day of my mission. I sobbed in gratitude to Him for everything in my life up to that point, especially for people I came to know and the life lessons I learned. I prayed that I would not blame my family and friends for their lack of understanding - that I could feel their love and help them feel mine while still appreciating my experiences in my own heart. I got up, wiped the tears from my eyes, and went to face my friends.
The next month or so was more difficult for me than any month of my mission - or any month of my life up to that point. I sincerely hope it will be the most difficult month of my life when I die, I don’t know if I can take something worse than that. The biggest problem for me was that I couldn’t actually identify any problem that matched such awful symptoms. Life carried on as it normally did, so why did I feel so different? I felt as if I had no one to confide in. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing the depth of my feelings in such a trite, ordinary, and hectic environment. I’ve always had a problem with feeling like people actually care about me, my experiences, and what I have to say. It’s more of my problem than anyone else but never had this problem become more apparent to me. As a companion on a mission, you are basically required to talk to one another about everything, or that's how I took it at least. It helped me develop a greater belief in myself and that what I had to say was valuable. It helped me feel more comfortable sharing my thoughts and being vulnerable. That safe space kind of shattered when I came home. There was no time to share - and I didn’t know how and never felt like I actually should. To be honest, most days I didn’t even know what I was feeling.
I was right about needing rest. I had wanted to run 6 miles when I got home. So a week or so after I got back, I did. I ran it in an hour and 5ish minutes. Not bad for me. The last few miles felt like I had gained 80 lbs. It felt like I was carrying a heavy weight on my back and ankles. I foamed at the mouth. I was so so tired. I was strangely exhausted, runs usually energize me rather than immediately drain me. I took a 2-hour bath when I got home and laid in bed for the majority of the day. I was whipped. This was my most significant experience with weariness, but this feeling was purveyed in every activity I participated in throughout the day. It was similar to what I felt on my mission but intensified, and now meaningless. It’s like in those dreams you have where someone is chasing you. Your heart rate picks up, you’re terrified, but no matter how hard you try you can’t move. You can’t run away. No matter how much force you apply to your brain to communicate to your muscles nothing happens. That’s sort of how it felt. I could do everything I could to accomplish what I wanted to or felt like I needed to, but I was weary. Deeply weary in heart, body, and soul. My capacity was stinted. Little tasks became nearly impossible for me emotionally and physically. In fact, the little tasks were usually the things that triggered me the most. Cleaning the house before cousins came over, buckling the freaking stupid car seats in the car, getting glued in brownies out of a pan, finding the beans in our Narnia of a pantry, etc. These things felt like people were asking me to climb Mount Everest. With no training. And asthma. They felt literally impossible. How could others understand my feelings of overwhelmsion at the simplest tasks? I understood 0% of it myself, so how could I try to explain it to others. It was hopeless.
I’ve never had problems with loneliness, I like my own space. I didn’t think I was lonely. But I guess my thoughts and feelings have to go somewhere. Sometimes I cry when I feel the Holy Ghost, maybe a few tears leak out at the end of a movie, but never have I hopelessly sobbed so much. For me, it was a lot. I asked for 2 blessings from my Dad. They helped, a little. The crying was always brought on by random and completely overwhelming feelings of despair, hopelessness, and futility. I had a constant ache in my lower back that had intensified majorly since the last few months of my mission. The pain, mixed with the inability to do simple things without feeling drained, mixed with the invisible -but sometimes very very visible- pressure I felt from my family, the world, and others, on top of feeling distanced from God due to scripture studies without meaning and no desire to read the Book of Mormon, I felt like a baby. A helpless, unhelpful, unproductive, lost, 20-year-old baby. My emotions didn’t just come out in crying, eventually, it turned into bitterness, emptiness, and a super bad attitude. I would snap at my family members for no good reason. When I had nothing to do I felt like I had swallowed a black hole. I felt empty. It’s what Viktor Frankl in Mans Search for Meaning describes as an existential vacuum. One day we went to help pick apples at one of our neighbor’s houses. It seemed like the worst task in the entire world, I could not have had a worse attitude about it. Generally, I really enjoy serving, especially on my mission. Yet with this activity and many others, I was confused by my uncontrollable attitude in that I hated every minute of it because it felt impossible.
The lives of my family members became unbearably stressful and overwhelming to me. My sister Miah’s unequal and reckless marriage, my Dad’s financial situation and constant state of being overworked and living an unbalanced life, my Mom’s constant need for help around the house, people to talk to, and the never-ending need to buy so many things, especially when Miah was around. Ari’s manipulative and martyr-type personality driving her into the ground with stress. Her fears, that by default, had to become my fears. Eden’s inherent goodness was too good for my inability to cope with life without needlessly striking out at her. Indy’s over-eating. Seth’s know-it-all-ness. Brig’s loneliness. All those three kids lack of education and addiction to technology that they learned from the best. Not to mention the plethora of all of my own issues. It drove me to many breaking points, I felt like I was constantly at the end of my rope and oftentimes still do. I didn’t want to lash out, yet I didn’t feel like I could share. These situations, among who knows what else, led me to feel the pain I have never before felt. I wanted to die. Life was too painful and empty for me to keep living. Sometimes the pain was sharp, other times it was deeply dull, (like my backache) and usually, a mixture of the two led to uncontrollable sobbing attacks. But I think the worst part about it was that it was always always always so dang confusing. Why was I feeling this way? Why did I have no control over my capacity and feelings? Why was my agency taken away from me in that I couldn’t choose what I wanted to feel? Or choose how much work I was capable of doing? Why couldn’t I get over this? Why was life so hard for me? Why do I have to fall into the RM cliche of struggling a bunch? Why couldn’t I be grateful for what I had? Why was it terrifying for me that this could possibly be a mental illness? Why didn’t I believe that mental illnesses were real? Why is this pain so deep and real for what seems like no cause? Why did I feel like I couldn’t share anything with anyone anymore? Why do I even have things like this to share?
I studied the Christlike attribute of peace the last transfer of my mission. “Consider the Lilies of the Field” became my new anthem. I felt like I would need those verses when I came home. That feeling was a blessing, once again. This anthem popped up in a couple of forms around me that first month I was back. I was reading a book with Seth and Indy to help them with their writing. It was about a presbyterian missionary, Cameron Townsend. It turns out - that was his life anthem as well. I wrote a paper about Cameron’s ability to trust in God and felt that Heavenly Father hadn’t left me completely answer-less. His pleadings to “toil not” were all around me. In times of sorrow, God often sends little tiny flowers of understanding that dot the dirt and manure.
Eventually, I realized that….something needed to change? Of course I realized that. I think that was the problem. I over-realized that. Today though, the pain has turned more into emptiness, and occasionally real laughter and talks with God. But, I’ve begun to see more dots of understanding. A month or so ago I found a therapist. It hasn’t changed my life, and therapy is wildly uncomfortable and I hate it. But it’s helpful. Diagnoses are dangerous, but they often bring us out of denial. They help us realize things about ourselves that we don’t realize because we’ve never known anything different - never lived inside someone else’s brain. I read a self-help book and hated myself for enjoying it. I can't decide what I think about self-help books. Often, they are useless. But this one to me at this point in my life was definitely not. It had things I don’t agree with, but it also had things that shook my world. Therapy does, too. Things that make me double-check my entire life. If I was a computer, it’s the things that make you go through and slowly but surely re-write your entire code. Everything that makes up who you are and what you believe. It’s painful and embarrassing. But, it's far less painful than not knowing what the crap is going on. It’s essentially the deepest kind of repentance.
I’ve learned about shame and self-compassion. I have great gifts, which can also be great weaknesses. The ability to see good and evil so distinctly also allows me to distress over the great inconsistencies... It allows me to see the evil in myself and others like blood on a white mattress cover. It causes me to be judgmental of everyone, especially myself.
I’ve learned about thinking errors, which I found myself knee-deep in.
I’ve learned about God’s infinite love for me...that He doesn’t just love me - He is love. The world would have us believe in self-love and witchy voodoo yoga meditation stuff, which is sometimes helpful if you can weed out the untruths and put God back in it. (I guess this is my issue with self-help) Moses’ response to satan-inspired-thinking-errors was simple, pure, and completely free of worldly influence. “Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten.” The truth is, we’re not enough on our own. Imperfections aren’t gifts unless we’re given eyes to see them through the spirit of God. The reason satan succeeds at convincing us that we are nothing is that it’s partly true. Ask King Benjamin, he says we’re the dust of the earth. So self-love yogi meditation affirmation stuff ei repeating to ourselves that we are enough, never rang quite true for me, and I don’t think it ever will, because we aren’t enough. But, what rings true for me is Moses’ simple, pure answer. I, Ella Johnson, am a daughter of God, in the similitude of His Only Begotten.
I’ve learned (and have yet to apply) vulnerability and courage. Which courage isn’t facing a bloody battle, (unless it needs to be) it’s doing what a certain actress did in my all-time favorite movie - letting people see you as you truly are. It’s choosing to share, or at least be open about what you actually think and feel. It’s sharing really ugly parts of who you are so that they don’t become even uglier. "The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere." Living with pent-up thoughts and feelings, a fake plastic face is no way to live at all. We need other people in order to overcome shame...important, trustworthy people.
I’ve learned that accomplishments bring me joy. And they shouldn’t bring me joy because of my innate ability to be better than everyone else, or my constant need for validation of my worth, they bring me joy because of Jesus Christ. He is the constant source of my strength, He is the eagle wings I rise upon, with him I can run and not be weary, walk and not faint. Accomplishments are proof of that strength in my life. They are also proof that weaknesses can become strengths, sorrows can become joys, and struggles can become victories. They are proof that someday I really can become like my Heavenly Father - so long as I don't try to earn heaven.
I’ve learned about the way our world twists the word rest into defeat, laziness, and unproductivity. Sometimes the greatest strength is needed to take a break, or ask for help. The necessity of sleep, rest, and refueling does not manifest itself as a lack of agency. The laws of nature are the only way we can live in a world where agency exists. And fortunately, resting is part of the way nature works and was even a necessary part of how nature was built. Yet, there are seasons and times in life to rest and to work. Some seasons may be longer, others shorter. That’s ok. It’s ok to respond to how you feel occasionally, even if it may be inconvenient or abnormal. Especially because feelings are often like a broken arm, they can be painful but they’re telling us that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. So even more importantly, it really is ok to feel sadness, discouragement, sorrow, despair. Sometimes we have to work through these, sometimes we are able to rest. I’ve also discovered the oversaturated falsehood that those who can’t seem to handle responsibility should be given less if any of it. Not true. I was/am experiencing a lack of purpose, meaning, and responsibility. Life didn’t seem to really expect anything of me anymore, it left me purposeless...which is part of this existential vacuum. I felt a bunch of expectations and pressures from others,(see next paragraph) but none of them were actually meaningful to me, they were unimportant and a nuisance...also seemingly impossible. Rest is good, but assuming life no longer expects anything from you is not. Rest should never equate to giving up, choosing to play the victim card, or backbiting and slander from those who expect you to work. The key is to find meaning in suffering, then it’s not pointless pain.
I’ve learned about so so many needless and pointless pressures and expectations we put on ourselves and others, because of fear. I’m always learning how to simply not accept insults as valuable feedback in my life...learning how to “heed them not”, and to first say “Who art thou?” In the end, what really matters? Politeness, social niceties, and being your best is important, but they’re not what matters most. What matters most is mourning with those that mourn, compassion, and empathy, which we build our polite traditions around but often these pure and real values get lost in translation, it becomes fake. Letting people see you fail is ok. It’s good, even. I saw a picture of a meth addict on Facebook recently. She looked just completely awful, her life was ruined. She was so ugly. I thought “wow, thank you Heavenly Father that I am not a meth addict.” Then, it struck me. I had been living my whole life saying “thank you Heavenly Father that my parents aren’t divorced, that none of my siblings are addicted to pornography, that I love good things, etc….” But what struck me was that this wasn’t so much gratitude as it was fear speaking. I all of a sudden saw that meth addict in a different light. If I was her, I would be ok. My life might be totally “ruined”, but what’s the point of the gospel of Jesus Christ if not for saving ruined lives? I realized I was totally afraid of becoming a meth addict, a porn addict, getting a divorce one day, etc. Because what would people think of me?!?! What would I think of myself?!? But if these things happened, it would be difficult, but I would be ok. My value would remain untainted. So, I want to work every day to dissipate that fear, because this doesn’t just apply to becoming a meth addict, it applies to simple and minuscule things….thinking bad thoughts, getting slightly angry, pooping my pants. These are things I fear, and things many people fear because of the way our society is built. We don’t need to fear them, because when we do - it just gives those actions more and more power over us.
I've learned that it's not wrong to care about other people - to care about fairness and right and wrong. I should never stop caring. But, it is wrong to force those ideas onto others - and to expect others to conform to what I think is right. It’s wrong to only care about my own virtue and how exceedingly righteous I am. The gospel is about love, it’s about people. That’s why God gives us commandments, not just so we can exalt ourselves. I want to and can help others, but only if I understand where they're coming from, and only if I can remain calm and not overwhelmed enough to actually communicate effectively with love and virtue. I don't need to put more work into other people's lives than they put into their own. Sometimes, this is very sad to me, and that's ok. But it is also a great gift, to have great desires to help other people. It's good. But things shouldn't have to go my way in order to be good.
I learned how important it is for me to spend time with Jesus alone. The garbage I’m fed and constantly feed myself takes work to shake off. It takes re-alignment with God and His will. It takes time to ponder, pray, and read what is actually true. I need time each day to reconnect to the source that makes me whole.
I’ve learned about happiness and suffering. I’ve learned about mortality. I chose to come here. I chose to accept the fact that suffering, sickness, and imperfections could be a normal part of my daily life. This is something I have already accepted and am learning how to accept once again. There is no exaltation in mortality. We work by the sweat of our brow, we toil in sweat and tears, and we live in a dark and dreary world. This doesn’t make life meaningless. Generally, I hate tragedies. I hate stories with characters that just suck...characters that are the scummiest of bags that destroy people’s lives. Who needs to be reminded about the awful state of our world? Not me, thanks anyway, I'm reminded of that enough as it is. But, I often miss the meaning of these stories. These stories aren’t worthless just because they are painful and sad. I distinctly remember one of my Young Women leaders saying “Imperfection is its own type of perfection” back in 2015ish...I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. It's pretty interesting how I still remember it. I think back on that a lot. Grammatically/logically, it’s still one of the stupider things I’ve heard...but now I catch more of her meaning. I want to be happy. I want others to be happy. But what’s more, I want meaning in my life. Meaning is found through and in suffering. Having meaning and purpose in life is a deeper and fuller version of happiness. Living and breathing for others - for God, for liberty, for family, for truth - it’s a war. It’s a tragedy. Sometimes I hate it. Other times, I catch glimpses of this “perfection in imperfection” nonsense. There is so much beauty -and yes, even happiness- in a life of sacrifice and toil.
I’ve learned a lot about mental illness. The issue still perplexes me, as I try to discern between the sneaky lies and also the unjudgmental truths that accompany this super popular topic. To me, it doesn’t really matter if I have/had a “mental illness.” Maybe it would have mattered if it got worse or I couldn’t find solutions… but all of us at some point have to go through something that is sorrowful and depressing, regardless of a diagnosis. I’m kind of more of the belief of my pal Viktor Frankl again - “Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is spiritual distress but by no means a mental disease. It may well be that interpreting the first in terms of the latter motivates a doctor to bury his patient’s existential despair under a heap of tranquilizing drugs. It is his task, rather, to pilot the patient through his existential crises of growth and development.” Our world is literally PLAGUED with mental illness! Especially anxiety and depression. It seems more likely that this is due to the climate and culture of our current world and a lot less likely that all of us in the 2000s were simply born with disease-stricken brains. This fact is now uplifting for me, rather than discouraging...it’s complex. We want to believe that mental illness is just like cancer, we could be perfectly healthy and fine, and this knocks us upside the head at no will of our own. Yet, our brains affect our personality, our actions, who we are, and vise versa. It’s far more complex. And because it’s more complex, it is true that perhaps many people were mentally diseased in the past - we just didn’t have the information to identify it. But I think it's less of a lack of information about the mentally diseased of the past and more just that people in the past didn't have mental illnesses as much as we do. For me the difference is those in the past knew nervousness, anger, sorrow, and sacrifice better than anyone! And they knew it because they actually faced it. They didn’t want to speak in front of an audience? Yeah, join the club. Of course no one wants to do that. But they did it anyway. The fact that our world has fostered these mental illnesses seriously brings me hope because it means that there are things to overcome! Things to beat! Things to better understand and know. There are pressures and anxieties to overcome, worldly phrases and standards needing to be detoxed from our bodies. There are also many hard things that we have to do - whether we’re anxious and depressed about it or not. And often the hardest thing we have to do is face that anxiety and depression and work to overcome it instead of letting it fester. This gives me purpose for the suffering. You may have a different purpose, but that is definitely a big part of mine. I understand there are some things that are out of our control. It’s hard for me to say because it’s a very tricky line to walk. We do not get to choose our circumstances - that was not a part of the agency deal. We only choose how we react. There are those that may experience emotions and reactions that they do not have the capacity to deal with, including me. But the thing about illnesses is that generally, you should try to overcome them. You get sick, you get better. That’s kind of the goal. If we’re going to compare mental illnesses to physical illnesses we can’t forget this part. We have to be proactive about our health. Often, if not always, I see people get diagnosed with a mental illness, and all of a sudden it’s their buddy for life. Maybe I am naive about how mental illnesses work, but if they’re anything like physical which many people say they are, there is a cure! Or, if anything, there is at least a path you can walk to have better mental health. Oftentimes, we may have to simply find meaning in a type of suffering that is completely out of our control, is completely chronic, as a part of mortality. At other times though, our suffering is our own book of life. It’s a record of struggles fought and overcome, challenges faced and beaten, and lessons learned. It’s a shame when I see those whose books of life are empty and wordless because of their illness that is “out of their control.” I understand a lot of this is contradictory to what I’ve said before - to be ok with sad, bad, and awful things and to not be a perfectionist. This is because it is up to each of us to determine where this line is drawn. Only we know what is going on inside our bodies, what is in our control, and what isn’t. What skills we have, and what resources we don’t have. It is true that we can’t pick our circumstances, whether that be cancer or a mental illness, but we can choose how we respond to these circumstances. God would never take that freedom away from us, and satan cannot - though he does a great job at convincing us. And I’m not saying “just choose to be happy already depressed people! The choice is yours!” Because I know sometimes, it really isn’t. I’m saying, take care of yourself. React to the sadness in a Christlike way. Choose the better choices. Don’t hate yourself for being depressed. Accept your suffering, accept your cross. Be sad, be really really sad even, but still do and think good things as best you can. Accept your circumstances, but choose to deal with them in the best way you know how - and seek out even better ways. Know that your value is still completely intact. Forgive yourself. Know that everything is really ok, even if your life feels like it’s ruined. Choose to see the world as it really is, choose faith, even if it takes a while to figure out what it looks like to choose these things. I hope I adequately expressed the complexity of my thoughts on mental illness - but I know it’s ok if I didn’t...regardless, these are my thoughts.
The date is May 27th, and I want to add some more things I have learned.
My current institute teacher has helped me learn a lot… the most relevant lesson being the value of work. Adam and Eve worked before they even fell from the garden of Eden. This work to them was a blessing and a joy as they beautified the earth. Work gives us meaning. Lots of types of work sucks, different types are no fun for different people. But work is how we live what we believe. It gives us something meaningful to do. I know mental health advocates think we all work too much...or worship “being busy.” That may be true, but God thought of this and gave us Sundays to rest. Wanting to be productive and busy isn’t a sin, it’s a God-given desire....as long as we don’t worship it. Our lives would be practically meaningless without work - it’s the little drudgery tasks that make up the beautiful big ones. Work does not set us free, but living consistent with our values does, which almost always if not always results in work.
I had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago. As I may have mentioned, I had/have been having weird emotional attacks for what seems like no reason...especially for simple things. Getting beans out of the pantry, putting car seats in… well, this time it was moving the air friers. I was prepping for a Cinco De Mayo activity days trying to warm up all of the tacos and I was running out of time and things seemed crazy in my mind….and Mom told me to move the air fryers because they were burning what was behind them and I would’ve blown a fuse...and then she decided they should just go in the oven instead...anyways; when she told me this, I felt so overwhelmed. That same old feeling that has been my bff recently. Tears gathered in my eyes, my mind raced, and I felt completely incapable of doing what she asked me. Rather than do what she said or run upstairs to cry I figured Joanna (my therapist) would be proud of me because I voiced my feelings…. I said “Mom, I’m so sorry, (not sure if I said the sorry part actually, yikes) but someone else is going to have to do this, because I really cannot do this right now.” as tears were streaming down my cheeks. I took a moment to breathe and consider what was happening to me. I realized something; earlier in that day Miah had a conversation with us about a lot of things...marriage, sex, relationships, humanity...life. It filled me with anxiety and hopelessness. I felt like my hopelessness in humanity was confirmed and reinforced. I told that to my siblings, I think they thought I was joking….I wasn’t, even though it is kind of funny that a simple conversation can do that to me. Ever since that conversation earlier in the day, this overwhelming feeling slowly but surely had been building and festering until Mom put the cherry on top that capsized the sunday with her request about the air friers. I realized part of the reason why sometimes these simple tasks overwhelmed me, and sometimes they didn’t. It is usually triggered by some confirmation of hopelessness earlier in the day/week where an overwhelming feeling builds and builds until something simple brings it over the edge. With this realization I decided that this issue isn’t about me being incapable or lazy...it’s about deep and internal turmoil. These simple issues aren’t really simple at all, they’re triggered by significant struggles of right and wrong, and me trying to make sense of and peace with humanity and how ugly it is. And of course I know humanity is ugly - they are some terrible people out there. What kills me is the fact that even good, moral, upright citizens have ugliness inside of them. It makes me feel as if there is no such thing as good people. Even goodness is infiltrated with hatred, pettiness, miscommunications, and backbiting...so that there is no goodness left. Even in me. Of course, as I wrote before, there’s beauty in this...somehow. But it’s very hard for me to remember that, internalize that, and essentially find that beauty, and that’s when I feel overwhelmed, which seems like an appropriate feeling to what I am currently believing. I hope to learn how to find this beauty as I talk with God. I know it’s there....I think. Most of the beauty has to be in the fact that Jesus Christ will make all things right in the end and sometimes even in the middle. There has got to be more goodness in the world than I think there is; and if not, there’s got to be a way for me to be okay with that. I’ll ask God if He’ll help me learn more about this.
Hi, it's me in the present again. Reading over this I feel a lot of gratitude. I'm kind of a unique person, this description of my experience and what I learned may seem strange to you. But it's true. That is how I felt and that in my view is what happened. The story goes on. I'm still learning a lot, mostly about vulnerability and love and marriage. But my existential crisis - the uncontrollable hopelessness and despair - is gone. By the grace of God. Praying to Him at certain points was the only thing that helped a little bit. I'm grateful that it didn't last longer. I'm grateful that I had the ability and resources to overcome mental obstacles. I'm grateful that though I still have issues with the ugliness of the world, I can move forward. I can feel peace. I can categorize thoughts, put distressing ones aside to be resolved at a later time. Life feels manageable, and only normally distressing. My family members aren't nearly as concerning as they were to me, if anything I mostly just feel love and humorous understanding of them. And for that, I am so thankful to God and the atonement of Jesus Christ - gratitude isn't a big enough word to describe it.
