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Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

The Enemy of the Soul - A Short Story by Lorilyn Roberts


The aging woman drew the window blinds even tighter. “No light,” she declared. “Light hurts my eyes. I mustn’t let in the light.” 

She stuffed towels between the blinds and the glass window and taped the blinds to the windowsill. She lived alone, locked in self-imposed solitary confinement with little human contact. She wanted nothing—not love, not pity, not even comfort. Those emotions were for humans who still felt human, but she had become a fragment of humanness long ago. She didn’t want to feel. She only lived to conquer the terror that welled up in her heart during the day and the predator that invaded her room at night.

“Why did they construct windows in this room?” she lamented. “I could keep ‘it’ out if it weren’t for the windows.”

Tap-tap-tap. The knocking on the door alerted her that her meal had arrived. She grabbed some cash from her cash jar and opened the door to the delivery man.

“Keep the change,” she said, which was hardly a tip, but enough to keep him coming back the next day.

She wasn’t going to eat right away, but the smell of chicken and rice soon filled the room. She relented. Pulling up a chair, she sat beside the covered window—an obsession that filled her with dread, but her weak-willed spirit held her in bondage.

“I will conquer ‘it’ tonight,” she mumbled. “I won’t let ‘it’ into the room.”

Night came earlier in the winter months, and soon shadows filled the room, etching strange patterns on the walls. She heard whispers through the window, the rattling of the blinds, and the lisping tree branches scraping the window. The screen had long ago been mutilated by “it.”

“No,” she cried out. “You can’t come in.” She tried to hold “it” back, the monster that wanted her. All night she fought it—with every ounce of physical and emotional strength she possessed. But “it” always won. She would fall asleep exhausted when “it” left at the first ray of sunlight. “It” hated the light—more than “it” hated her.

“If only I could be set free of my misery,” she wrote on a piece of paper. “I don’t want anything except to get rid of ‘it.’”

Her husband had abandoned her, and her children had cut her off long ago. Somewhere on those streets below the window, they lived. “I must tame the window. I must keep ‘it’ out. I must conquer the enemy of my soul.”

She didn’t need love. She didn’t need anything; she was quite capable of taking care of herself. If only she could destroy “it.”

Then one day, she heard a different kind of knock. “Who could that be?” she muttered. Months had passed since anyone had come to see her. She timidly approached the door.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“I have a package for you, Ma’am,” the voice said.

“A package?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The woman unbolted the door, and a postman who held a small brown envelope greeted her. “Can you sign here, Ma’am?”

The woman initialed the package receipt and closed the door. As she strolled toward the unkept bed, she read the name, “U.C. Little.” Her heart skipped. She hadn’t read that name in years—her ex-husband. Why would anyone be sending his package to her? She tore open the envelope to discover government papers inside.

Her ex-husband would need these papers, but she wouldn’t send them to him. He should have taken care of this a long time ago. “Am I my ex-husband’s keeper,” she smirked.

She took great delight in tossing the papers aside. “Another chance for me to get back at him. He took away my dreams. He doesn’t deserve anything from me.”



That night, the darkness grew fiercer, and nightmares invaded her mind. The intensity of the spiritual attack made it difficult to tell the natural world from the unseen realm.

The next morning, feeling tired and disheartened, she fixated her eyes on the covered window. “I can’t keep ‘it’ out. I’m lost,” and her defeatism brought her to her knees.

“It” is winning,” she admitted. “I’m dying.”

“If only…I could do things all over again.” She turned to the table where the government documents lay discarded.

Weeks passed as she lamented her inability to defeat “it.” With her strength diminishing, she was ready to give up. Living only to beat “it” was futile. She wanted to die, but that would mean “it” had conquered her. Never!

One morning, she heard a knock on the door. She recognized it as the knock she’d heard once before. “Another package?” she mused. “Surely not.”

She went to the door, and indeed, the same postman stood there with another brown envelope.

“Can you sign here, Ma’am?”

The woman complied and shut the door. But this time, she didn’t tear the package open and dump the contents on the table. Instead, she sat by the covered window with the envelope on her lap. Did she want to spend the rest of her life cut off from the world, from her children, from everything?

“What a waste,” she heard a voice say. Startled, she glanced around the room, but no one was there. 

She stood and walked to the dresser, pulling out a pen and envelope. Where did her ex-husband live? She returned to the window chair and peeled back some tape from the window blind. Eclipsed sunshine peeked through the open crack. Dull from darkness, her eyes flinched at the intense brightness.




What would U.C. Little think about the package when he received it? She attached a note—unthinkable a few weeks earlier.

She smiled, delighted that she could see the light—bright, unrelenting light. It didn’t matter what U.C. Little thought—she could see the light. 

Jeremiah 9:21 (KJV):  "For death is come up into our windows, [and] is entered into our palaces..." 

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

A Life Transformed, Memoir by Sana Edoja.

I (Lorilyn Roberts) have known Sana Edoja for several years and am glad she wrote her memoir to help others. Memoirs are powerful, and I look forward to reading hers.  I hope you enjoy this short excerpt.


STRUGGLES

Going through tunnels,
I can’t see the light.
Surrounded by darkness,
who will save me?
Who will say,
This is the way; walk in it?
Who will hold my hand
to tame my fear?
Who will even say?
It’s over. I am here,
to be your guide.

From beginning to end,
Earth to Heaven.
I will never leave you, nor forsake you!
Island of plenitude,
Encounter with the light
is what I desire
most in my life.
The fields are white to be ripe.
My Savior has come.
My struggles are over.




I was born into a modest family in France. My dad is French. He is a non-practicing Catholic. He was baptized as a baby and received his First Holy Communion. Catholicism was practiced as my grandfather was Protestant, and my grandmother was a non-practicing Catholic. My grandmother was very strict; when her children misbehaved she used a whip. They lived in the countryside near a small village called “Saint-Léger.” My dad and his siblings dropped out of school at the age of 12 to work in the fields to earn wages for the family.

A few years later, my dad travelled to Morocco where he met my mum; they married and moved to France. They lived in Toulouse, the south of France where my dad worked as a builder. Later on, he trained to become a quantity surveyor to provide for our family. My dad was exhausted when he came home from work and barely spent time with us.

I was the eldest of five children (three girls and two boys). He always wanted to watch the news in silence on TV before going to bed. He would only intervene in our upbringing if we needed to be disciplined. He rarely asked us questions about school or life. On a few occasions, he would take us on bike rides and to the fair, but he usually only played with us on Christmas Day. He never had time to develop a proper relationship with his children. I saw him just as a disciplinarian. My parents usually sent us to summer camps on holidays.

My mum had been a primary school teacher in Morocco who taught nine and ten year olds. She had four brothers. Her dad worked in a factory, and her mum raised the kids at home. Her father was also a disciplinarian. Her younger brother used to misbehave. One day, her dad hit him on the arm so strongly causing him to bleed. The wound became infected, and he died at a very young age.

My mum’s uncle controlled the family’s decisions. Children had to financially support their family. My mum’s wages were shared between family members. She wanted to work in research labs, but her family forced her to become a teacher. Her uncle was a tailor; he made the uniforms for the Moroccan army. He made my grandma sew a few uniforms, but he hardly paid her. My mum had to dress poorly because she had to give most of her wages to her family.

This caused strife in the family. Her father performed a lot of Moslem rituals in order to please his Moslem god. My mum described a family environment of strife, poverty, violence, oppression, greed, stinginess, and unhappiness due to money issues. My mum’s dad used to beat his children when they misbehaved.

I concluded that there was a lot of unhappiness, poverty, and violence in my dad’s and my mum’s families. I now understand why my siblings and I had a harsh upbringing.
From a very young age, I longed for a better world, one filled with angels, peace, and love. Deep inside, I always knew that Heaven might be somewhere, and I wondered how to reach it. I believed in a better life after death, free from oppression, fear and suffering.


Disappointed by the world around me, I desperately needed to find meaning and decided to search for the truth. I tried all sorts of things to make my life better. I went as far as doing things like making a wish when losing an eyelash, reading my horoscope, and visiting fortune-tellers. The predictions turned out to be all lies—not one of them has come to pass. The most amazing thing is that none of these practices were able to tell me that I would one day have a personal encounter with the God, who would give meaning to my life.




I remember coming back from school, completely depressed. I had enough of my family and the cruelty at the hands of my classmates. I lay on my bed, crying and thinking about going to a better world with angels. I wanted my life to end on that day. I managed to pull myself together when my sisters came home from school.


I enjoyed scaring my sisters and brothers by hiding in their cupboard. One day I even scared my dad by hiding in the dark as he came back from work. He didn’t find it very funny and scolded me by telling me it was very dangerous, and that I could cause somebody to have a heart attack. Scaring my family was a way to bring a bit of fun in my life, to forget my own problems.

One day, I hid in my bedroom cupboard for a game of hide and seek. Unfortunately, my dad saw the door of the cupboard wasn’t locked properly, and turned the key to lock it. I’m grateful that my sisters came home. As I shouted for help, my sisters heard me and opened the door. Maybe I was looking for help and didn’t really want to die.

I enrolled at a university in France in business administration, which I found extremely boring and a waste of time. I chose this path for the sake of achieving something, but did not really know what I wanted. Most of the things I had wished for, such as a career, a boyfriend, a loving home, and friends, had not happened. I was so unhappy that I often thought about committing suicide. Life at home was very tense because my parents were always arguing. I had to find a way to get away from my depressing life.