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How I Didn't Let Depression Ruin My Life

Overcoming mental illness and coping with change.

By Alissa BudzinskiPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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My immediate family has a history of depression and anxiety. My mom and sister both take anti-depressants and my sister also deals with severe anxiety. I always thought I was an exception. I was not. In grade 10 I went through a period of depression that lasted months. I didn't realize what it was at the time. I had no will to go to school so I stayed home most days. I'd miss two-three school days a week. I still got by with average grades. In grade 11, I figured out what I wanted to do in life. I found passion and motivation and was able to overcome the depression. I started working hard in school and rose to the top of my class. I graduated with honours and was accepted into a university overseas for a masters program.

For the first few months of university, everything was great. I had good friends, a good social life and all seemed well. But slowly I started to realize that I was ill-equipped for my course. Coming from a small town, I didn't have access to the higher math that all the other students had taken. I began to fall further and further behind. This triggered the anxiety. I was able to manage it fine at home but as soon as I got to a lecture, I would begin to freak out. Hearing them talk about all the things I didn't know scared me. I couldn't get more than 10 minutes into a lecture before I had to leave.

Then the depression started. I began staying home, rarely getting out of bed other than for food. This went on for months before I decided I should talk to a doctor. The doctor gave me anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants but the damage had already been done.

Exams came and I failed half of them. I reset them in the fall but failed half of those. I had no choice left but to retake the two remaining modules before I could progress to second year. I worked really hard and studied a lot but I was still fighting some of the depression which wasn't aided by the fact that all of my friends from first year and progressed and I was left behind. I rarely saw them anymore and we lost touch. I was socially and academically humiliated. It only made the depression worse. There was a day when I woke up at 4 in the morning and sat crying on the floor of the shower for two hours. That was the day I had my first suicidal thought.

It wasn't so much about me killing myself as it was me just not wanting to be alive anymore. It was about me not knowing what to. What to do this minute, what to do this week, what to do with my life. Everything I had worked so hard for had crumbled around me. Something that I was so sure of in life was suddenly out of reach.

I ended up failing one of the courses I was retaking and this was when I made the decision to leave. I realized that this wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want to live a life of stress and depression. I made the choice that was best for my mental health and my happiness. However, it wasn't an easy choice. I had spent tens of thousands of dollars to go to school overseas and a lot of people were counting on me. But this decision was about me and what I wanted. Sometimes you have to be a little bit selfish. If you're stuck in a place you don't want to be in life, there's no reason you can't change it.

I know change is scary but sometimes it's for the better. And you know what, I still don't know what I doing with my life and that's okay. Ever since I've quit university and all the stress, I haven't had to take my anti-depressants. Depression is hard and change is scary but I'm not going to let it ruin my life.

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