The Holy Week

Jesus died. And it was a tragic, painful death for the proclaimed Messiah. No one can imagine how a single human was able to manage such the sacrifice.

But people celebrate His death with grandeur, dedicating four days of a single week in April for a commemorative holiday. Regardless of how much He suffered, endured, and died for, the Holy Week marks an important part of Christian faith: the Messiah's Resurrection.

When I think back, nobody sane would celebrate someone's death by being happy. Solemnity often comes free with mourning. But because of how wondrous and effortless His rising was, it's hard for the subsequent followers of this faith to consider the four day process of His death, burial, and Resurrection as the cornerstone for their proclamations and teachings.

I envy the Son of God for being able to endure His tragedies and return, in a white light, with many people awaiting His coming.

I wish I could perform the same miracle. Not with my physical body, but with my emotional self.

I didn't know any better, I've died many a time during my dark days, living with depression and anxiety. It's a heavy feeling that comes and goes as it pleases, like rain clouds, looming over.

The Holy Week had me at my most troublesome. I've realized that...leaving me alone is dangerous for my sanity, and I often find myself thinking of particularly dark thoughts, or breaking down at a random, unexpected time, or in most cases, waking up to no motivation to do anything, much less eat, or live.

I'd assume that others of my age spend their holidays with their families. I didn't, however, for my step-mother left in the early morning hours of Maundy Thursday, travelling by means of the old family vehicle, along with my mother and step-brother, since his new job in Canada started the following week. They had insisted that I participate in the venture, but I was aware that waking up at around 2 in the morning wasn't included my list of capabilities. My body preferred to stay home, sleeping in on the loud knocks at the apartment door.

That day in particular was the final day of my solitude after my grandmother spent the preceding two weeks in Japan, where the Land of the Rising Sun greeted her and my aunt Joyce's family with memorable splendor. I didn't mind those days. Perhaps it would have been contradictory to my previous statement, but I found peace when I was alone with own thoughts, because I've discovered that the sounds of a busy life made me uneasy. Having to listen to my own, small breathing and hushed cries were lonesome, but stilling, too.

Disappointed as I was in myself to have missed the knocks of my step-father on the door to get ready to leave with them, I opted to busy myself with what I usually did to distract myself: watch videos online. I had no drive to anything else, so watching other people do those things, like play the games I like or mess around with their cats, brought me a semblance of life that I longed to grasp. Perhaps the only pitiful reflection I could manage at that time was how peaceful solitude became once you got used to it.

The following Friday, I woke up to a morning no longer still and solemn, for with my mother's return came my grandmother's as well. The clanging of pans and pots and the buzz of a TV anchor like some sort of condescending litany of life, telling me to get up, be productive regardless of the force that chained me to my bed. I regret to say that I was thankful that my grandmother would leave for church later that day, where the urge to waste the solitude in watching mindless movies was eventually quelled.

It was ironic for me to refuse to look back on my regrets and focus on cheering myself up. Black Friday, as I assume, was the day they crowned the Son of Man with thorns, nailing Him to a wooden post - a designated time for mourning and reflection for the devoted members of this faith. If my memory serves me right, however, I know that I had no motivation to deconstruct the darkness in my brain for enlightenment purposes. Even going as far as considering becoming fruitful as a chore, I resulted to watching miscellaneous movies that humored me for most of the day, ranging from a variety of comedy and drama and finally, as if to compensate for the faithful sadness that the nation fretted over, a single tragic movie with no happy ending (I refrain from giving the title).

I believe that it was uncalled for in the minds of loyal Christians for me to waste the day in some makeshift act of mourning, but I think everyone can be a little irrational at times...especially when under the influence of some external emotion such as one that heavily clogged my mind at that point. 'Worthlessness', if not for the lack of a better term, perhaps served as my own repentance for what I then assumed as my unhealthy existence in the world.

I simply stopped trying at that point.

The following Saturday is but a blur in my memory, as if I simply passed the day without truly knowing what was occurring around me. I notice that these lapses in my brain's recollection ability have become frequent as of late, and I wonder if this is what it means to lose focus or concentration, a symptom of depression that my doctor notified me of only a few days ago.

My Easter Sunday was by far, out of all the seven days of what the Catholics saw as holy week, the most Christian. And I say this now, I don't know what overcame me. From getting out of bed, wanting to actually do my laundry, pick up a pen and write, and eventually decide to attend church with my mother...it was anything I could barely imagine my hopeless, wasteful self could do, even after I ultimately did nothing Holy in the Holy week prior.

But I remember a person going about their depression, among the many accounts that I've read, of how it is easily comparable to the weather, where rain pours with no designated times, and sun prickles back in at the most random times. It's funny, really, as if it was a sign to put a little sun in my Sunday, shine a patch of light on the darkness impeding my productivity, reflect, repent.

Live. For once. 

The church's pastor repeated a sermon he has done for over 20 years, and it was nothing different from what I regularly heard about Jesus' rising. But he described in detail of the pain of being up there, and the torment of having to support your body on an upright structure built for your torture. I was strangely mortified, and I only then realized of how fascinating the way the pastor explains his sermons. Needless to say, I think that much allowed to see some sort of semblance of my withered faith, believing in rising and again, believing in Him.

I still envy the Son of Man, I think, but it's the sort of emotion that perhaps, could be molded into some sort motivation to live the way as He did.

And that's something I want to believe in, too.