"I'm not worried about you."

"I feel like you are one of the few people I don't have to worry about."

These were words that actually placed more weight on the anchors that dragged me deeper into the sea that suffocated me. I felt that I needed to be better and that I shouldn't be feeling the way that I was feeling, but I could not resurface. It got to the point where each day blurred into each other and I had no will to live. I went through the motions of school and church, but inside I was dead. Dead emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

I lost my self. He was taken captive, or maybe he ran away, but all that was left was a shell.

It was as if he became a different person entirely. He thought about dying multiple times. Thinking it would be better to get hit by a car or to jump off a bridge. Thinking he needed to end his life so that he would stop wasting the resources of this earth. Thinking that if he died, there would be no one to mourn for him. That his friends did not care. Or did he have friends at all? One Sunday, he wanted to end it. He went to church and he felt that it was the last day for him. He would rather die than feel numb from the draining parasite of depression feeding off him. He could not get up for worship, in fact, he refused to stand. The pastor called the congregation to repentance, but he believed that he was too great a sinner and that He had abandoned him. In rebellion, he prayed to darkness to take his life because he was done with it.

Then hands pressed on his shoulders. He heard words of prayer. As quickly as the words came out, the tears of someone behind him poured down on him. The thought that ran through his mind, 'I love you. I'm not done with you yet.'

For a moment, my eyes let out trickling streams. Streams that contained hope.

I want to say that I no longer have depression, but I would be lying. I still struggle with seasons of depression, and I feel that at times my self runs away. He wants to run from hurt, rejection, and social expectations. He is afraid of not being able to change and become better.

But one thing that keeps me falling into my sea of depression is knowing that God was with me, He is still with me, and He will be with me forevermore. Like how Jesus grabbed Peter before he drowned in the water, He is grabbing hold of me.