To tell you the truth, I have no idea how I became an optimist. I was living a happy life during 9th grade and the beginning of 10th grade, and then pessimistic cynicism just smacked me in the face like a pillow case full of bricks. I was diagnosed with severe depression that made Eeyore seem like he had the demeanor of Spongebob when he first gets his job at the Krusty Krab. I wrote a lot of dark things for creative writing in my free time. I look back on who I was and where I was and wonder how I didn’t shop at Hot Topic. I guess if my mom couldn’t guide my happiness, she could at least guide my fashion sense from crashing into the sun and I owe her for that. One of the worst things I know about being sad is people knowing that you’re sad. Most of the time, people wouldn’t want to help me feel better and instead I was thought of as a buzzkill. Sadness, depression is not pretty and it’s not an attractive social quality in high school. Unfortunately, those people are the ones you need to the most to climb out of that self-devouring hellhole.
That’s a little history on my experience with bottled up bull, just so you know where I’m coming from. I’ve lived this and I’m here right now to tell you that you can un-live it. Part of this is inspired by a tweet I sent out this weekend. It went:
The amount of happiness in my life has skyrocketed over the past 6 months and I walk around with the biggest of dumb, goofy smiles.
And so much has changed in that six months! Ever since I turned twenty years old, it’s like a switch flipped in my head. Colors are brighter, I sleep more soundly at night, food tastes better, but what hit the switch?
Awareness.
I spent an entire summer aware that the largest contributing factor to my negative outlook on my life was myself. I was stagnant, stubborn, and stuck in my ways, and I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want negative thoughts, from both severe depression and OCD, occupying my mind. I sat down and made plans to make myself better without ripping up everything from the ground. I wanted to get back to the happy kid that I used to be, not someone completely different. I started working four shifts a week at my job, and taking extra shifts when I could. I took an over-the-summer intensive English course to help out my school progress. Most importantly, I stopped dwelling on things that I couldn’t change instantaneously. When you find yourself in a hole, and you want to get out, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
I was essentially able to blockade negativity from my mind, as I just didn’t have time for it. I was never sitting around to wallow in the swampy muck. I avoided writing things focusing on those bad feelings; I just tried to live more actively. And the craziest part was that after only three or four months of doing this, it worked.
What I want to convey to everyone reading this, especially young freshman who find themselves in a hole like myself, is that you can climb out of it. You can’t do it instantly, but you can start the climb out as soon as you want to. For a while, you’ll feel like you’re moving at a snail’s pace, but inches become feet, and feet become yards. Sooner than you’ll think, you’ll constantly feel like the sun is shining on you and you’ll emanate your own glow of gross incandescence.
