Depression Isn't Always the Enemy

It's currently 1:20 AM. I'm sat on the toilet... (I've been in here for at least 15 minutes now, give or take). Don't worry, I am not having a wee while typing! This is just my safe place. The door is shut to the world and no one can see my sadness. I have not been okay. In fact, today I honestly didn't think I'd make it. But here I am, writing this for you to read.

Why is any of this important to you, you may ask? I thought when I was down, that was it. I can't be positive, that would be lying, right? I thought that all I needed was something amazing to happen and pull me back up. I needed something great to be able to feel great too.

Something I have always said is that bad times make you appreciate the good times. Though, I rarely took my own words into consideration.

Life has definitely messed me up in more ways than I would like to admit. As many of you also have or do feel, it was like the world was going against me. The last few years especially took a lot out of me. It moulded me into this depressive ball of mess that even me working as a cleaner, did not want to clean up. Every minute that passed was a new problem for me.

So while I was sat there on the toilet, barely able to even breathe, I lost it. I just let my mind explode with every bad thing that I kept hidden away up in there. That's when I hit the point of realisation I guess. What's success without the pain, right?

We don't need that amazing thing to happen to feel the hope that it carries. If you only collect happiness through happy events, it will run out.

We do not find our strength through being handed the good, positive vibes. We find it from what we create on our own. In other words, don't wait for something to make you happy to get back up. You need to know, getting up with nothing is going to be hard but once you learn that way of thinking, things will be a lot lighter on your shoulders, or should I be saying mind?

I don't want to rely on waiting for something uplifting to come along. When it comes without us creating it ourselves it is a present from life. Do we live our lives only using things people gift us with? That would be stupid to do. Obviously, that just isn't reliable and neither is it healthy to limit what we need on a daily basis just because we weren't given it. We go out and get our own resources that we need. Sometimes this is even better as when we are in control, we can make sure the resources are indeed correct for us. We aren't all the same and we need different things. We should put that effort into our mental health too. Life won't always give you the lemons if you do not help plant them to grow.

Going back to something I told you in the second paragraph, "I thought when I was down, that was it. I can't be positive, that would be lying, right?" You need to let yourself be positive when you are not doing well even if it feels like a massive lie and just damn right out of place. I mean, how else do you begin if you shut it out due to thinking it is fake?

So, dear Depression. Thank you for existing. We can not improve until we are shown why we need to and we can not improve when we're feeding off of what life gives us without our own effort.

I'm nowhere near happy yet and that's okay because look what the pain of depression taught me.

I can feel it though. I have a little flame flickering right now but it'll get bigger and it'll be beautiful.