An Honest Letter on the Inspiration to Keep Living
With the new year approaching, we wanted to spend the month of December looking back on the top 8 blogs of 2017. This post was originally published on April 17, 2017.
With the new year approaching, we wanted to spend the month of December looking back on the top 8 blogs of 2017. This post was originally published on April 17, 2017.
It was devastating, in a single moment I felt that I had lost everything. Never in a million years would I have thought that I’d suffer from such a diagnosis.
I stopped music, stopped working out, stopped doing all the things I loved to do. I hit rock bottom. I thought, 'this is the end for me.'
We can’t change what happened, but we can respond. We can love. We can listen. We can help. It won’t fix everything but damn it, we’re going to try.
I want to challenge the narrative surrounding these struggles. That’s what my sister would want me to do. That’s what I want to do. My sister wasn’t weak. My friends aren’t weak. I am not weak.
I will pay it a hundred times over, for the simple pleasure of a beautiful sunrise or a mug of tea heavy in my hands or another mile run or a hug from a longtime friend or the smile of a stranger across a crowded room.
I wish I could say that after 3 years and 4 treatment centers, I’m completely recovered. I mean, I could say that. It just wouldn’t be the truth.
I wrote my first novel when I was relatively mentally healthy, and pretty much immediately after I finished it is when I started to get super depressed.
As we struck the final chords of our set, and the last lyric closed out, a heat washed over me unlike anything I had ever experienced.
High-functioning depression is a slow-burn, invisible but powerful. I can be all the things everyone expects me to be. At the same time, the fire inside will eventually consume me, if left to its own volition.
My story is only one story, but it’s a story that matters—as does yours. You are me and I am you, if in no other way than that one. And I can tell you with the most genuine of hearts that I want you to live.
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