The Drive Across Town

There is a route she could drive with her eyes shut, and it goes past three places she could have stopped at.

Left at the lights instead of right. Along the dual carriageway. Past the retail park, past the one near the school where the woman behind the counter once said her name without being told it, which was the end of that one. Twenty two minutes each way, in a town where nothing is more than eight minutes from anything.

She has a podcast she only listens to on that drive. It has become the sound of the drive. She cannot hear the theme tune anywhere else without her stomach doing something.

It started with a surgery. That is the part that still catches her, four years on, because there was nothing in it. A knee, a good surgeon, a follow up appointment, a printed sheet with instructions on it that she followed exactly. She was not reckless. She was not looking for anything. She did what she was told by people who were trying to help her, and they were trying to help her, and it worked, and her knee is fine.

And then the weeks got a shape. And then the shape got a schedule. And then the schedule started deciding things: which day she visits her dad, whether she goes away with her sister, what time she can be relied on, how much of a conversation she is actually in.

Nobody knows about the drive. That is not quite true. Nobody knows about the drive.

She is not a person you would look at and think anything. She works, she laughs, she is good with people, she sends birthday cards on time. And every so often she catches herself in the mirror of a lift and thinks: I am somebody who plans routes.

If any of that is your life, in any version of it, then before we go a single step further, hear this from me.

You did not do anything wrong to get here. You followed medical advice. That is the least shameful sentence in the language and you have been carrying it like a charge sheet.

And hear the second thing, which matters just as much and which I will hold all the way to the end: nothing on this page asks you to change anything about your treatment. Nothing here suggests you stop, cut down, skip, hide, wean, or handle any of it on your own. Not a word of it, not gently, not by implication. Every one of those conversations belongs with the people who actually know your history, and this message would be a dangerous thing if it tried to have them for you.

What we are dealing with here is the hold, and the shame, and they are not the same thing as the medicine.

The face you have been keeping down

There is a line in the Psalms that reads like it was written for people who plan routes.

They looked to him and were radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.Psalm 34:5

Look at what it is actually describing, because it is a physical thing, not a mood.

A face, turned up. That is the whole picture. People who looked, and something happened in their faces when they did, and the word for it is light.

Now think about what you do with your face. In the pharmacy queue. At the counter. In the lift. In the moment somebody asks how you have been and you produce the good version. Down, or sideways, or arranged into something. A person carrying this becomes an expert in the angle of their own head. And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

Shame is not a feeling about what you did. Shame is a feeling about what you are, and it is a liar with a very specific job: it keeps you from looking up, because looking up is where the help is, and the whole point of shame is to keep you alone with it.

That is why it made you drive twenty two minutes. Not the substance. The substance does not care where you are standing. Shame drove that car.

So let me separate three things that have been welded together in you, and let us look at them one at a time.

There is a body, which developed a dependence the way bodies do, chemically, honestly, without asking your permission and without any moral content whatsoever. That belongs to medicine and to the people looking after you, and you stay right there with them.

There is a hold, which is not the same as the chemistry. It is the thing that decides your week. It reorganizes your dad, your sister, your reliability, your presence in a conversation. It has taken a place in your life that is not a medicine's place, and it is that seat, not the tablet, that this message speaks to.

And there is shame, which came last, produced nothing useful, and did all the isolating.

Freedom, here, is not the chemistry ending on a schedule I have no right to set. Freedom is the hold coming off and the shame going out of the house, and both of those are available to you today, in a car, in a lift, in a kitchen, with your treatment exactly as it is.

I want to say one more thing very plainly because it is where real harm gets done to people like you. If you are on medication for this, including treatment that is itself a medication, that is not a lesser kind of recovery and it is not a lack of faith. Anyone who tells you God would prefer you white knuckled is telling you something God never said. Ask for more help, not less. Tell your prescriber the truth about the week and the drive. Sitting in front of a professional and saying it out loud is not a defeat, it is the exact opposite of what shame wants from you, and God is standing squarely behind it.

And if the weight of this has ever taken you to the thought of not being here, that is where a message stops and a human being starts. In the United States, call or text 988 and someone answers. Anywhere else, your local emergency number or crisis line. And tell one real person today, out loud. That is the bravest and most faithful move on the board.