Sometimes depression has an adorable way of sneaking up on us when everything seems to be going okay.

So you’re happy. You have a great job, great friends, great class schedule, great living situation. You name it, it’s going alright for you, and everything finally seems like it’s relatively in order.

Then all of a sudden, something really small goes wrong. You had no reason to expect that one teeny tiny thing would slip up and then send you into a downward spiral.

My first two years of college were not exactly what I expected them to be. They weren’t ungodly awful by any means, but they were certainly less than ideal.

I’m not really sure when it happened, or how it happened, but finally something started to click and things started to turn around. And it wasn’t until this year that things were exactly what I expected them to be. There were no surprises and everything had a place and it was all in its place.

For the first time, I had everything in order, and I felt like a real human being instead of the lifeless zombie that I had been previously.

I have great roommates, we have a cute apartment close to campus, I have a job that I enjoy, and a class schedule that actually interests me instead of all of the Gen. Ed’s that get unbelievably tiresome.

Right as I was reveling in the drastic difference in this feeling that I was experiencing, something slipped. This can be interpreted in any number of ways, but basically what happened is that when one thing went wrong, I started thinking about all the things that have gone wrong recently and have been left unresolved.

To make matters worse, I was already so sick that I had to call out of work (which is not something I particularly enjoy).

So there I was, spending days in bed feeling sorry for myself because I was operating under the assumption that every time I tried to do something productive or make a positive effort for my life, it all turned to shit. I felt hopeless, useless, and alone.

Sometimes, depression has an adorable way of sneaking up on us when everything seems to be going okay.

All signs pointed to things still being stable even though I felt so unsettled. I was lost and unproductive and I couldn’t even talk to the people who I care about / care about me.

My logical processes were dulled, and no matter what I tried to do or think, I couldn’t get out of the mindset that despite all my best efforts, I was in fact a failure and that fact was completely irreversible.

Sometimes, depression has an adorable way of sneaking up on us when everything seems to be going okay.

I’m not sure how or why, but something motivated me to get out of bed and try to problem-solve my way out of the hole that I seemed to have found myself in.

It was a shelf. A stupid shelf that I had tried to hang up in my room in an effort to get organized. Once it fell, I went with it, and I realized that I had used the shelf and the consequent mess as a metaphor for my life.

Something as small as an addition to my bedroom sent me into a downward spiral, and even though I don’t understand why that is, after I spent some time trying to work out my issues in my head I decided that I would try again to fix my room, my mess, and ultimately my life.

It seems silly, but every once and awhile something as small as a messy bedroom will inevitably become a metaphor for how you feel.

Fortunately, concrete things like that can be resolved. And once you clean up after yourself, you start to feel like you have accomplished something and can do so again.

All is not lost. Even though depression can have an adorable way of sneaking up on us when everything seems to be going okay, it doesn’t have to take over your whole life.

This was one of the shortest depressive episodes that I have experienced, which has given me hope that it does get better.

For anyone who has similar dark experiences, it doesn’t always have to be that bad. Find something concrete to channel your feeling of helplessness into and you will ultimately feel like you have something to contribute.

To people who suffer from depression, you are not alone. Even when you feel powerless, whether it be caused by a serious issue or something silly like a shelf, you have the power to change your environment so that you can open yourself up to better feelings of empowerment, hopefulness, and optimism.