I'm not writing this article to get pity. I'm writing it to spread awareness and just to make myself feel a slight bit better. The depressed people in the world are the ones that hide it the best. The people with the worst anxiety, you would never think they are struggling with anxiety. Two of the hardest things to struggle with in a lifetime, I am now struggling with.

My mother always told me that when I was younger I was a social butterfly. I was always reaching out and making friends, always talking and never stopping. Now, I am so introverted, I stay to myself, I don't reach out to make new friends, I don't reach out to make plans with the friends I have now. I care too much about what others think about me. I try to please everybody I meet in my life. Eventually that starts to take a toll on some people. I have a problem with opening up and trusting people. Not only do I have trust issues, but I have abandonment issues, the 2 people that should've loved me and stayed with me unconditionally left my life. I am very lucky that I have my mom now that adopted me, when she didn't have too. She took me in like I was her child, when I was just another child my father partakened in having.

Here I am 21 years old, and living in such a dark place, a dark state of mind, a place that I never in a million years would've thought I would be living in. I have become so numb to the thought of feelings and emotions. I've become clueless and absent to the relationships I have had in my life. I'm not the Shayla everybody has grown to love and care about. I am so lost, numb, clueless, scared, and in the worst way possible sad.

I feel nothing but sadness when I wake up. I feel nothing but sadness when I go to work, and when I come home. When I'm out with friends or having a family day, I try my hardest to put on a smile and pretend like everything is fine. Deep down I know that the people that are still in my life right now checking up on me daily, talking to me, reassuring me that everything is okay, and that they are here for me. But internally, at the surface of my skin and next to the bottom of my heart, I feel helpless.

Like I said before I have never in a million years thought I would be at the emotional level that I am at right now. When I am asked what is wrong or why I am so sad, I have nothing to say, frankly because I don't know what is making me so sad. Some say it's the global pandemic we are all going through, it's the job, it's the home, it's the basing your life off of everybody else around you, or it's the searching for love and not loving yourself. Maybe it is all of those things, maybe it's just one of those things. Who knows. I can't be the person everybody wants me to be. I need to be the best person for me, I need to live my life.

I have always found my escape at the cheer gym, dance studio, running, and through writing. With how life is, I can't go to the cheer gym or a studio, and writing anymore has been so dry. I have had such bad writers block, my mind has had nothing to persuade me into writing an article. When you are feeling down and worthless, find what makes you happy and do those things. Don't listen to what people say about you, it's an opinion, not a fact. Nobody can speak factually about you but yourself. If there are people out in the world that find amusement and happiness by dragging others down, odds are they are depressed and filled with anxiety too. Don't let those people into your life. You don't need any help feeling low, you have that on your own. Find people and activities that make you feel happy, or at least when you're with them in the moment, all of the depression and anxiety are at ease for that moment.

People who are the most depressed hide it the best. If you looked at me today, you would never guess that I am not myself, you would not guess that I cry on a daily basis, you would not guess that I have no motivation to do anything anymore. I wake up and put a smile on my face that I wish with everything would be a true, genuine smile; but that's all I can do, I can only wish that it was a real smile. I was always the child that would have my mother running around like crazy because I was always so busy, but anymore I would rather just sit at home alone in my room, lay in my bed in silence or with my sad music playlist playing. I will be the first to tell you, I have seen therapists when I was younger because of my childhood. I have been told to go see one again, I have been contemplating it, but how do I know this therapist won't leave too? How do I know that I can trust this person? This person is going to be a complete stranger to me, and I am supposed to open up to her/him? As Peyton Sawyer says in the show One Tree Hill, "people always leave."

If you are feeling this way, just know you aren't alone, you aren't "weak", you are you and it's time to better yourself mentally and emotionally. No matter how long it takes or what paths you are destined to take, you got this. Your body does not define you. Your life does not define you. Your parents, family, or friends do not define you. Your past does not define you. You make your own definition to your OWN life. Live your life to the fullest and be YOU. Don't live in the dark shadows or in the darkest corners in the world. Get out and find your happiness, it's time we take charge and crush this thing called

Life. Depression and anxiety are hurdles in the world that are given to some of the strongest people, it's a part of life that we have to live with, but not let them live through us. It's our life, not theirs.