Seeing the Whole Deck

I was in the middle of a classic doom scroll when I stopped on a video that opened with “Depression is a lie.”

I remember thinking, Okay… bold claim. You’ve got my attention.

Instead of spiraling into platitudes, the guy explained his point using a simple magic trick. A deck of cards. Nothing fancy. So let’s put ourselves there.

I’m standing in front of you, holding a plain deck of cards. I show you the top card — it’s face down. You can clearly see that. Based on everything you know about how card decks work, you naturally assume the other 51 cards are face down too. You don’t question it. Why would you? You’ve seen enough to fill in the rest.

And that’s the point.

While I’m talking, while I’m asking you to pick any card, I casually flip the deck in my hands. You don’t notice. There’s no reason to. I fan the cards out and every single one you see appears face down. You choose a card from somewhere in the middle — because of course that feels more random — and you lock it into memory

Then, quietly, I flip the deck again.

I ask you to slide your card back into the deck, face down, just as you found it. You do. Everything looks exactly the same as it did moments ago.

Here’s the spoiler: the deck was never what you thought it was.

Only the top card was face down. The other 51? Face up the entire time. You just never saw them.

With a little flair and a few unnecessary magic words, I flip the top card, fan the deck, and there it is...your card...the only card facing the opposite direction.

Magic? Not really. Just sleight of hand… and assumption.

You never saw the whole picture, so your brain filled in the gaps. And it filled them in wrong.

There’s that old saying: when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. Crude, sure, but uncomfortably accurate. Our minds are phenomenal storytellers, especially when they’re working with incomplete information.

This is where I get into trouble.

I spiral. A lot.

One rejection becomes I’m not lovable.
One rupture becomes I can’t trust anyone.
One failure becomes I’m incapable.

Those thoughts feel convincing because, like the top card of the deck, there’s some evidence. Just enough to make the lie believable. But the conclusion? Completely disconnected from the full reality. I have also learned, though extensive counseling, that it is also a way that my brain attempts to protect. If I can apply logic to not fall into the same trap, then I won't get hurt in the future.

Amanda has been the person who gently, and sometimes bluntly, helps me see that the deck isn’t stacked the way my mind insists it is.

Her joy isn’t loud or forced. It’s steady. Grounded. Real. And it has this way of quietly challenging the stories I tell myself when I’m stuck in my head. Not by arguing with me, but by existing differently than my assumptions allow for. She possesses a godly level of patience for me and my spirals.

That’s part of why asking her to marry me felt less like a leap and more like clarity. I'll definitely make another post that go over the "story" of this in another post.

The engagement wasn’t a moment of emotional impulse or denial of the past. It was the opposite. It was me finally seeing the whole deck and not just the one card my fear kept flipping over and over again. It was choosing truth over assumption. Reality over narrative.

The feelings tied to depression are real. Heavy. Sticky. I don’t deny that for a second. But the conclusions we draw from them? Those deserve to be questioned.

Because more often than not, they’re built on a partial view, a single card, while the rest of the deck is telling a very different story.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do isn’t change the deck at all…

…it’s just turn it over.