Life is a balancing act, for everyone. It's deciding what to prioritize, deciding what matters to you, who matters to you. Everyone can understand how hard it is to juggle all of the responsibilities and still take care of yourself and still have fun and not neglect friendships. It's all part of the balancing act.

Life with mental illness is really, truly a balancing act. And a lot of times it seems like a battle. A battle between the rational part of yourself and the part of yourself that is your mental illness. The balancing act we call life can seem impossible when you combine it with trying to balance different parts of yourself that never seem to agree with one another. A lot of times it seems easier to just give up rather than to keep working for the balance that never seems to come. And when it does come it always seems too brief, too hard to maintain.

Balance is something that I've been thinking about, and struggling with a lot this semester, in every aspect of my life. Balance has been something that seems foreign to me lately as the responsibilities pile up higher and higher and my motivation dwindles. Balance has been a concept that I've been forgetting lately, a concept that for awhile lost its weight with me, lost its meaning.

But the concept of balance is something that's very important to me. It may seem like a simple word but to me, it holds a lot of weight. To me, it's become a reminder to myself to keep fighting, keep trying. A reminder to myself that while my depression is a part of me, it's a part of me that I can control. It's a part of me that exists but it doesn't have to win. Balance, to me, has become the source of my strength, my drive and my motivation. Balance has come to be the way that I push myself to keep moving forward.

Even in the past several weeks when everything has felt like a struggle and it seems like I'll never get out from under the weight of everything around me, balance has helped me. Reminding me that I need to keep going. Reminding me that I need to make time for myself and prioritize myself, but then I also need to prioritize other aspects of my life.