Conquering Depression

​It all started… when I was born.

​Okay, scratch that. It was more like 16 years, 7 days, and 8 and a half hours after I was born.

​My depression started January 19, 2013, after my first real relationship ended. It wasn’t really bad at first; I could deal with the fact that we needed a break. But then, there was the drama that followed. Rumors about why things ended the way they did; how the fact that he cheated on me with my best friend played into it. One thing led to another, and I finally put the puzzle pieces together; he cheated on me with my best friend, a girl I considered my sister, and then after we broke up, she dropped me like I was nothing and they made their relationship official. There is so much more I could say, so many details I could add, but I think it’s understandable at this point how upset I was. I was betrayed by the two people who meant the most to me, and it didn’t seem to bother them that what they did was wrong. It only took a month and a half for all the details to come together and hit me in the face, but my little period of complete darkness stuck around much longer.

​I, along with many others, have a problem where the act of being emotionally hurt makes something click in our minds. We can’t tolerate the intensity of feeling emotionally pained, so our minds wrap themselves around the theory that physical pain will make the emotional pain go away. Thus, we are convinced that causing ourselves physical pain will ease the numbness that emotional pain can cause. So I started self-harming. A lot. And after a while, it came to a point where I had to get approval from doctors saying that I was “mentally stable” enough to come back to school. This was because in April, I attempted suicide.

​Getting evaluated by doctors and counselors isn’t something I enjoyed. I hated talking about my problems, especially to people I didn’t know. But the evaluations and questioning made me realize something; sulking and letting my problems control my life was only going to plow me into the ground. I finally accepted the fact that I needed help, and that revealed a little spark of hope that had been hidden beneath the darkness. And after that tiny spark was found, I was determined to become happy again. I didn’t want to stay depressed. It wasn’t good for my mind, my body, or those around me that had to watch me suffer.

​People say that the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. That was honestly the last thing that I wanted to do, but I knew it was the only thing that would motivate me to get better. It was the first step towards healing and breaking through the darkness I had been engulfed in. I started going to a counselor once every two weeks, and while I was skeptical about going at first, it really did help me gather the strength I needed to let everything go. And eventually, I did let everything go, even though it was very difficult at first. Now, a year later, I’m happy to say there’s no more darkness, no more depression. I found the light at the end of the tunnel.