When your mental health has been improving but then goes on a sudden downward spiral with the word "relapse" looming over your head, it feels like a losing battle.

"Relapse" is a beast that sneaks up on you and pounces from behind. You don't expect it because you've been doing so well, and it's frightening.

I've found myself struggling with relapse and the fear of it for several weeks now.

When spring quarter began, I thought I was just feeling sluggish because winter quarter wore me out and summer was so close. I began to feel tired all the time, I was unable to focus on homework and I lost motivation to study. Getting up for classes became a struggle and I just wanted to lay in bed all day. It was like I had reverted back to who I was one year ago when my mental health had gotten really bad and I had just started going to therapy.

Worst of all, I thought about jumping off my balcony again. I used to think about it a lot before I started going to therapy. Those thoughts hadn't visited me in a long time, but now, they were back, and I was terrified. I didn't want them coming back.

I thought medication and therapy over the past year had been helping me cope and get better, but now that I've been reverting back to some of the behaviors I had prior to treatment, I don't feel so sure anymore.

Am I relapsing? Am I close to relapsing? I can't know for sure, but the possibility terrifies me.

Relapse. That's not what I want. That would be moving in the opposite direction of what I want.

A few nights ago, I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. I felt happy to see her again and relieved to take a break from sitting in the library, unable to read another page in a book for my English class because my mind would keep telling me, "What happened to you? Why do you suck?" But I was tired, concerned and stressed, so I wasn't as energetic with her as I usually was.

I was carrying an invisible weight on my shoulders that I thought I had pushed off of me. But no, it managed to fall on me all over again.

I told my friend about my returning behaviors and she said, "You sound depressed." My head collapsed into my hands and my mind screamed, "I don't know what's wrong with me. I thought I was getting better, I thought I was doing better, but I just don't know anymore."

We were sitting and eating pizza but my thoughts were suffocating me and I kept thinking that I needed to get back to campus soon. "I can't stay out late. I have to get up for an 8:30 class tomorrow. I have a lot of reading to do. I have an article and two essays to write." Then, "I can't go on. I can't do any of it."

But I stayed and kept listening and talking to her because I knew that if I went back to the library, I would be crumpled in a chair at a desk alone with my head in my arms, trying to read with no one to distract me from the thoughts that creep into my head about the balcony and the jumping.

The thoughts that shout, "Come over here, come take the plunge. Come over here and get this over with. Jump. Come over here and just do it already. Come now and you won't have to worry about living anymore." I didn't want to be alone with them again.

I missed class the next day because I was too exhausted to leave my bed. Instead of moving my limbs, I slept through the entire morning and afternoon until 4. I woke up, ashamed of my inability to move from my bed for so long.

Moving forward from here is difficult - so difficult - because it's not the first time you've been like this. You were getting better, and now it's like all the progress you made has been for nothing, as if it just flew out the door and was a waste of time.

As hard as it is, now is not the time to give up. You're better than that.

Deep down in my mind somewhere, I know this. It might be a while before I believe it, but it's there, in my head. I've made it this far. I've gotten through it once, and I'll get through it again.