Good Days

I am going to spoil the ending for you, and it will make some of you upset with me. Might even make you respond with your own anecdotes about your experience with depression.

I don't care. I am here for me. Depression is a choice. You're choosing depression. Want to be free from depression? Confront that bitch head on!

Refusing to be depressed is not easy. It is a conversation every single moment of every single day. It is not a win or lose match. There are no rules, and there are certainly no boundaries at all. For me, depression was a person who I could see and hear. I thought she was real. Actually, she was real because I made her real. I remember one night going back and forth with her (depression) and realizing that I am alone. It really was just me manifesting my worst nightmares.

My parents were aware of my depression but I felt blocked. How do I explain that I don't agree with her, even though her is me? It was a terrible fight, that I thought I had won. I hadn't, ignoring her did the trick for a while but she came back once I began to live alone.

I knew that I had a hold of her (her being depression) when I refused to have a bad day. I literally refused to let anything upset me. That tactic worked for a while until an actual bad day came up. How I acted that day was the real test, oh and I failed. Did I consider myself depressed? No. However I knew that if I didn't accept this bad moment for what it was, merely a moment, than she would get louder and louder and envelope me. Notice how I went from saying bad days to bad moments? Well I had to work on a micro level. Too many things in one full day and I wasn't ready to maturely look at life as an "at a glance" scope.

Life is not THAT bad. How do I convince myself of this? How do I make myself believe this? How do I make this my reality? Simple. My little black journal.

The black journal had the title " Moments" engraved on the cover. It was the perfect symbolic tool. I would write down good moments when they happened. My moments book became apart of me. What is even cooler is that even in my bad "moments" I had my book to remind me of my good moments.

The moments started out little. " I caught the express bus today and got to work 4 minutes early." " They put a medium fry in my happy meal." " My hair looked good all day today."

These things really put a smile on my face and enjoying the little things became quite rewarding. It took me two weeks to fill up that little black moments journal. 100 pages of positive interactions in my day. Even writing this now makes me feel all sparkly and magical.

I am not debunking the validity of therapy, antidepressants, and other standard practices to treat mental illness. However, I did not want to treat myself, I wanted to heal myself. It's an on going process, but me and my little black book will be just fine. :)