For about four months now I have been treating my depression and anxiety disorder.

My mental health I can honestly say has been in a way better place that it has been since I was about 15 years old. I recently looked through some old pictures, and saw the way I looked last semester of college. I look unwell, sick, extremely thin, and just not myself.

The thing about mental illness is that it disguises itself in many forms. It came in forms of me starving myself, me partying too much, not going to class, overworking myself, or detaching myself from people I loved. After I finally came to terms with it, I finally see my disease as it is, and it's not me. My disease is who I am, but it isn't all of me.

I look at the person I've transformed into, and sometimes I wish I could tell myself last semester, or fifteen year old Shana, she was going to be alright. However, the truth is, if I didn't figure it out for myself, I would not be in the place where I am today. Today I am a double major in Theater Arts and Women and Gender Studies, I have amazing friends, supportive family, I've been in a loving relationship for a year now, I have my peer education group S.T.E.P.S, and VDAY at Fredonia, which are basically my families as well.

I feel lucky that I'm in the place that I am today. I also realize not everyone is in the same place that I'm in, but I continuously tell myself and try to tell others "it's always darkest before the dawn," because it's completely and utterly true. Life gets super hard, and living with mental illness is exhausting, but if you keep fighting, you'll come back more resilient than ever before.