Alive Again
Written by: Jade Struck
The only time I feel alive is when I do the thing that scares the shit out of me.
When I was younger, that looked a lot like jumping horses over river banks, chasing steers I shouldn’t have been chasing, almost backing off a cliff in my pop’s truck with my sister giggling uncontrollably when we realized “that could’ve been really bad.” Those we’re the days and oh how times have changed.
See, it’s not that those days are gone, it’s just that they’ve changed as to how I experience them. What once was right in front of me is now a memory that I cling to in times of loneliness and being homesick. Missing my twin counterpart and the experiences she has as time goes on without me beside her, as she welcomes a beautiful baby boy into our family, blessing all of our lives. I look on from afar, through a screen. I recently spoke to my mom and she reminisced on how I always used to say, “Mom, I can’t WAIT to be an adult! I can do what I want, go where I want, have a job and buy myself cool stuff. It’s going to be great!” Sweet baby Jade, how I love your naivety and your exuberance. Soon you will learn, this adult thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I’ve been an independent adult since I was 18, so going on 5 years now. If you tried to explain what depression looked like when I was young, I really wouldn’t have understood. Also, knowing myself I would say, “oh no, that will never happen to me!” as I run off to hangout in my horses’ stall. The good ole days. How much I love them.
I believe it’s important to describe to you what my life looks like from the outside today. I am a competitive shooter, I am an “Instagram influencer”, I am a firearms instructor, I am an athletic person. I am a model, an actress, and most importantly I am engaged to a truly wonderful human being who loves me. From the outside my life looks fricken awesome, and at times it is! However, I struggle with bouts of depression which spew episodes of anxiety, most the time it’s when I’m alone in my thoughts of how many stupid mistakes I’ve made, how much I miss home, its generally all about how I don’t feel as alive or happy as I used to.
My birthday, February 11th, 2021, I’m 23 and it’s all coming to a head. It was a good day but was still covered by the metaphorical depression wet blanket and I finally said “Fuck this, I can’t do this anymore.” I had been looking for a therapist for months and because of the times, no one was answering their phones. I prayed to God and said “Holy Spirit please just help me find someone.” I just needed help. Professional help, because I couldn’t do it on my own anymore, that much was true. So boom, on my birthday I was given a chance to get better.
The following Monday I went in to meet a therapist (T for anonymity sake) and get evaluated, it was nerve racking. T is a beautiful person and woman, she has a sweet smile which she wears often, very put together with her makeup and hair, her room is bright as hell and I think she knew I was nervous.
As T peaked at me over her glasses, she listened to me and was taking notes. I’m like, “dannnngggg those notes are gunna be rough.” I don’t even want to know what they said. She said, “Well Jade, you have ADHD, which would explain the depression and anxiety bouts. We will work on that first and then we can start working through your past. As far as your relationships go, remember everyone comes into them pre-qualified, and when you get into one it’s like a negotiation. There are things you consent to in your relationship and there are things you don’t. It’s your responsibility to reinforce your boundaries and if the other party doesn’t agree to them, then you should consider if YOU’RE willing to compromise on your boundaries.” That wasn’t so bad. That’s actually great advice. BOOM!!! Off to the races. I began to feel more alive again, as well as adventurous.
A week later I agreed to go to an event called Winter Strong. It’s an outdoor weekend where folks in the strength world as well as outdoors-man get together, camp for three days, break bread, and on the second day there’s a competition. Now, I’m a very competitive person. I enjoy setting personal goals and I enjoy focusing on a task for short periods of time especially when they involve my hands. Also, I’ve been competing in shooting for 5 years at this point so I’m all about that life. However, this was a fitness competition. Due to my depression, I hadn’t been training at all, I am not my usual strong self, also my athletics have never been my main gig and I’m surrounded by a bunch of premier athletes so my first thought was, “Heck no I’m not going to compete, these people are way better than me!”
See, the competition is everyone’s favorite part, Rudy lives for it but he had just had a knee operation and it wasn’t 100%. We were talking in our tent, and I said “Baby, if it’s going to make you nervous and you’re afraid of doing it, then don’t do it. They will understand.” He agreed, and decided not to compete. I silently thought to myself, “Well if he’s not going to do it because he’s injured, then I should do it because I’m not. No matter how much I suck, I will do it for the two of us.”
I go to the tent for the comp brief, hearing what was going down I said to myself, “WTF did I sign up for?! THIS IS GUNNA BE BRUTAL. I haven’t been training, I feel fat and slow. Should I back out now?” Next, we line up to be picked into teams, I think to myself, “No one’s going to pick me.” I hang my head because I know I’m gunna be the odd ball out, the person who people have heard of and don’t want anything to do with. “Pick her she’s a good shot.” I hear someone mumble. “We pick Jade!” My head shoots up in disbelief, I’m picked to be on a team with a new friend I had met earlier. Thank God.
As we wait to go out and do our thing, I’m stretching and saying to myself, “I will not be the last in line. I will stay in the middle, if I can’t be in the front but I will not fall behind.” All of this mental prep and psyching myself out…
So the competition is on and we go; we’re running, doing lifts at one station, run to another and jump over a wall, run to another and do KB swings with weight I’ve never even looked at before. With every station a bit of my ego, my shame, my regret, my fear slipping away with each drop of sweat running down my face. We get to the shooting portion, not to my surprise, I fuck it up. I’m shooting the wrong targets and it’s not surprising to me because I may shoot decently at times, but its only like half the time. The other half is shit and I feel bad for the false advertising that they picked a shooter who vehemently messed up the shooting portion.
We finish, we don’t win. I’ve gotta tell you, I did not care that we didn’t win. I had the most incredible time competing alongside new friends, cheering them on as we all sucked buttermilk. I realized I had never competed just for fun. I’ve competed in sport, for prizes and to beat my foes, but never just for fun. Never with friends, never in a competition that wasn’t set up for me or didn’t have my pride on the line. It was the most fun I have had in my entire adult life and I wasn’t even going to do it!!! It’s this competition, this string of events, this work on the grindstone of my ego, all of it that lead to me pursue the dream of having less knock-down drag-outs with myself behind closed doors.
My point of my story is this; time goes on as do we. Things happen, they affect us, we try to do better, sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we need help, sometimes we need community, sometimes we are scared. What I have found is, nothing matters if you’re not doing it with a little fear and a lot of guts. The most transformative times in my adult life have been when I was afraid to be embarrassed or fail, but doing it anyways, because in that place is where we become who we want to be instead of who we used to be. We have to move with the times, we have to re-adjust, we have to look off that cliff and say, “I’m not going to fall, I’m gunna fly.” How can we fly if we don’t train our wings to be strong? To carry the burden of our shame and regrets and lift us higher than our circumstances and what has happened to us.
There’s work to be done alone with ourselves, but there is also work to be done not alone but surrounded by people who may not know all of your shit but believe in the person who is in front of them today. I used to say to myself when I was young, “you have to believe in you before anyone else does.” And that’s true, but there are things about you that you can’t see. And you won’t see them unless you have another person or people to act as a mirror for you, to show you who you really are. Or in an arena that makes you drop that ego, who I am still working with, to become a beginner and learn to know yourself in all areas of life.
I have found through all of this how important community is, how isolation is really a silent killer, and how possible it is to heal through the past by building your future and support system. Also I’ve found that confidence does not come from everything being awesome; winning, looking great, talking eloquently. Confidence comes from knowing yourself, where you come from, what you’ve been through, and using it to propel you forward.
I encourage you to try the things that scare you, even if they are small, like working out in a group setting or trying the thing that you have absolutely no idea how to do but you want to learn, and see what happens. You don’t have to be the best at it to still get something from it. I will leave you my younger self’s definition of what resilience is: “Resilience is not what happened to you, but who you became because of it.”
Sending you all my love and strength <3
Jade
About the Author: Jade Struck was born in Simi Valley, CA on a ranch with her 3 sisters, where she grew up riding horses, shooting guns, and barrel racing. Jade is a firearm instructor, professional shooter, model, actress, Instagram personality, and athlete. Jade enjoys teaching women to find their confidence through firearms and physical fitness, speaking about mental health/spiritual health/emotional health on her podcast (“the Milk and Honey Podcast,”) pushing herself through physical fitness, modeling, and acting, preparing to launch her own company, Struck Society, and spending time with her animals, husband, and loved ones. You can find Jade on her Instagram @jadestruck, Facebook @jadestruckofficial, and on her upcoming YouTube channel, Jade Struck.
