Hi, my name is Kayma, and I was diagnosed this year with something that I never thought I’d have. I was diagnosed with depression.

Now, I’m sure some of you have it. It may be more or less severe than what I have. But there’s a big difference between my depression and most people’s depression. I didn’t know that the feeling I constantly felt was depression, and I lived over 10 years just thinking there was something wrong was me.

There is something wrong with me, but I never thought it to be depression. Let me explain this for those of you who don’t know what depression feels like. I’m not sad all the time, there are just times when I feel like a black cloud is following me. Like a cloak is weighing over my shoulders and I’m not strong enough to lift it off. It causes you to feel like you aren’t enough, and it can cause you to feel like you’re alone. Learning to live with it was easy for me, but realizing that I had it was not. It’s different for everyone, so maybe yours is harder to live with. Maybe it’s easier to live with. I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that it made some impacts on my life before I could have done anything to prevent it.

Every day it seemed to be the same routine. Wake up, I’d wish to stay in bed, but my heart would pull me on my feet and throw me in front of my mirror before I had a chance to stop myself. I’d get ready, wearing my hair down every day, throwing my makeup on, throwing my clothes on, and heading off to school. After school, I would go to work. Then I’d go home, shower, and go to bed. Every day was the same. I never got out much, and when I did, it was almost like my friends had to encourage me to go somewhere. Or sometimes I’d be encouraging them, because getting out and forgetting all my problems and drowning my week in guacamole and tortilla chips seemed like a good way to go.

I was happy most days, but there would be days when I would kind of just want to do nothing but sit and be alone. I realized that I couldn’t let my pettiness take control of me. I needed to grab the reigns and haul myself to the life I wanted to live, not the life I was living. There was never anything wrong with the life I was living. I had some personal stuff going on at home, but nothing I couldn’t handle. That's how I looked at everything though: there was nothing I couldn't’ handle.

I’ll admit it, and I hope I don’t sound cocky. I know what I am capable of as a person. I don’t have fears, and there’s nothing I won’t try at least once. That’s never how I pictured myself to be at this age, but that’s who I am. Here’s the catch: All my life, I knew there was that cloud over me, or that cloak on my shoulders. I never knew it had a name until as of recently. Now that I do, though, I can honestly say I have never had my life together more. Years ago, I wanted to be traveling the world as a music artist. I wanted to move to California, lie on the beach, and I had aspirations so beyond reality that my head was in the clouds. Years ago, looking at my life as an adult, I knew exactly what I wanted. Though, things change over time and I stepped into reality a bit more.

Understanding that I needed a safe and reliable method to cope with my depression, I realized only I can stop my own mentality. It’s almost a talent to me, being able to have something dreadful leaning over you 24/7, and being able to completely ignore it and live normally most of the time. Though there are times when my depression knocks me down, I never allow it to get the best of me. What did I do to make sure it would never knock me down again? I got busy. I got so busy that I hardly had time to sleep or breathe it seems. I work four jobs, just finished high school, and my mind is always running. That way, I don’t have time to think. That way, my depression doesn’t lay a cloak over me. I always have somewhere to be, things to do, and that cloak seems to slip off the moment I get going.

I used to let my depression haunt me. Back when I did nothing about it. Back when I believed it was all in my imagination. Once I took a step through into the light, I saw the reality of having a disorder and I told myself I was not going to let it run my life for me. I had set too many goals and there were too many things I had yet to do in my life. I decided to fill my time with those things. If I wanted to do something, I didn’t even second guess it. I just scheduled it when I had free time aside from my busy work schedules. I got back up when I decided that I knew who I wanted to be, and I wasn’t going to let anything take that away from me. That is when I knew, I had become invincible. Nothing, nobody could stop me now. It was a powerful feeling. A confident feeling that I didn’t understand fully, but I didn’t want to. I had learned in my past that not everything needs an answer. Not everything has an answer. There’s no answer as to why I was chosen to have depression, there’s no answer as to how it came about. All I know is that I survived it, and I’m still surviving it. I’ll continue to survive it. Just because I know I can.

So here’s my lesson to you: Don’t let a disorder, a disease, a sickness of the mind get in the way of your life. You have things to do. Places to go. A life to live. I don’t care if it’s obesity, anorexia, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, cancer, whatever it is, you have full control. No, you can’t make the disorder or disease or sickness go away, but you can control how you decide to handle it. You are a lot stronger than any sickness. If you wish to change something about yourself, or make your life better, then now is the time. Don’t wait, because you’ll find yourself waiting forever. Life is too short to live it on a leash. Embrace your sickness, take control, and overcome it. That’s how you will stand up one day and say, “I made it.”