When I was super depressed I had started a blog and detailed a few of the things I had felt over that time. Ironically, I stopped writing in it about a month later but I just found it the other day and decided to take a moment to read through this tiny memory lane. And I found that I had written on the day I was going to kill myself (which was in February whoops). I was going to celebrate it this year but I couldn't remember the date and it slipped my mind. I'm kind of amazing at how long it feels since that day because it feels like forever ago. That day was terrible because I felt I had lost the only future I had. The only symbol of hope I had left was extinguished and I was really ready to end it but in my post I said "I am so very tired. But I will try one more day." And I feel like making that decision really was the turning point. I want to share something I had written in one of the last posts I had made. I think it's a good reminder about hope

"I think sometimes the most important thing that we so often forget when we deal with things like depression and anxiety is that we, in some sense (or at least me), welcome it into our lives because it feels so natural--it seeps in gently and logically and we don't notice until it's a part of us. We romanticize the darkness. The hurt. The ache in our hearts and the fuzziness in our brains. It's so very sad and we think we are alone in how we feel. That no one else we know feels this way or suffers like we have suffered. Without even realizing it, the flood gates are open, no matter how hard we try to keep them shut, and stay open until we close them. But we forget that we even can. And even if we remember we barely have the strength to get to the door let alone push it shut. It’s so hard to stop thoughts that just end up dragging you down into a spiral of despair. I know I wasn’t able to pull myself out for the longest time. It felt like eternity. You end up forgetting what it’s like to not feel pressured and not feel sad and suddenly all you are left with is a dark pit and someone closing the lid as the light and air you need and everything slowly gets extinguished. You are in the dark and you're running towards where you thought the light was but it doesn't take long for you to tire. To wonder if you're even heading in the right direction anymore. You slow to a stop and get scared. What if the floor beneath your feet becomes as sharp as glass. Has the world always felt this way? Depression is such an attentive and abusive lover. It isolates you. It destroys your self confidence. It physically manifests and hurts you. Except instead of a person this abuser is inside yourself--in the dark recesses of your doubts and fears.

But the most empowering thing I have come to realize is not that you can beat depression and that it will disappear forever—because that’s untrue. The most important thing is that the answers to fixing it, containing it, and being happy again, they all lie deep within yourself. To stop saying “I can’t” and to start saying “I will try” and find that something, anything to motivate yourself once you’ve been so deeply hurt and broken. To stare yourself in the mirror and say "I am worth it" even when you don't believe it because you promise yourself you'll make it true eventually.

I was stuck forever in a rut only circling in one direction. Now, I had thought I had tried everything because I made my movements more slowly or quickly. I had made the orbit smaller and larger. But I wasn’t able to think that the answer might be in the opposite direction, that came with help. That perhaps to take that step forward, I would need to take a few steps back and re-evaluate everything. Because there is more to the world that I could not see and I haven’t tried everything yet. There was still hope as long as I was still here. And there will always be hope as long as I am still here.

It won’t make it automatically better. Not by a long shot. I still oversleep beyond a semblance of normality and my social anxiety has grown to be the size of a giant purple hippo that takes up all of the room. I can't leave the apartment without staring at my shoes the whole walk to wherever I'm going. I'm still broken.

But it helps your sanity because suddenly, you realize that there has been a veil over your eyes. That you had sunglasses or blinders on and that perhaps the world is wider and brighter than you have ever known.

And most importantly, you have the power to take it off."