It's 1PM and I just got out of bed, and now I'm sitting on the floor and crying. I have to go to work in a few hours and I'm thinking of how I'm going to make it through an entire shift when the second I try to engage with life, I melt into a breakdown. This isn't a typical day for me. But I knew it was coming.
I was diagnosed with depression almost eight years ago to the day. I thought depression wasn't a big deal. It was high school and I was an emo kid, everyone was depressed. That was just life. I was fine with being depressed. It was as time went on that I realized depression was so much more than I thought, such a bigger battle than I was prepared for. I couldn't control it as well as I thought, and anytime I thought I had adapted to it, it just changed the way it presented itself. Be that as it may, I learned a lot. I learned how to control it, how to change it, and how to overcome it.
Eight years later and I'm (usually) in a totally different place. I am so much happier with my life than I ever expected to be. I have a wonderful marriage, an apartment with the love of my life, and two dogs that fill me up with joy every day. I would consider myself as someone who has beat depression. Most days I forget I even have it.
But then there are days like today. There are days when instead of fighting through any little issues I may have, they rain upon me and I feel like I can't escape. It's a chain of events that I fully recognize- I feel a twinge of anxiety for no reason, I get a little twitchy, thoughts and fears that I just can't place fill my head, and then I start to cry. If I even think about anything, I start to cry and it doesn't stop. And then depression works overtime and makes me feel stupid and worthless for not being able to stop it.
I know how to handle my depression to the point where it doesn't effect my day to day life much anymore. But then there are days like today, and I realize I'll never be able to truly escape it. It's something that stays for life. This happens to me every few months, with little to no explanation as to why. That's the thing with depression- it can't really be explained. Sometimes it just happens, and I've learned to live with it. I've learned to live with days like today, but they're still some of the hardest days of my life.
If you ever feel like you can't get away from your mental illness, know that no one truly ever does. The people who are out here loving life still have days where they can't get out of bed and when everything they see makes them cry. It happens to the best of us and while there's not much we can do, we persevere. We fight back as hard as we can, and some days that means not fighting at all and letting yourself break down so you can be strong once again.
