Coping with Depression

Before I understood what was happening, I found myself going through intense moments of silence. I don't mean quite literally, but in the times where I would lay in bed for hours for no reason, staring at the ceiling with empty thoughts, I knew it would spell trouble.

People always assume that those who struggle with day-to-day depression, have the worst days when their thoughts are the loudest. When their thoughts drown out the outside noise, and all we can hear are the negative voices telling us terrible things.

My worst days were when I found myself alone, with nothing to think about, conceding to the feeling that I am worthless, and no one would care or notice if I had gone. In those days of silence, I would lock myself in my room, and lay in bed for not just hours, but for days unless it was time to eat, or I needed to use the bathroom.

When it was time for me to socialize, I would change into a different person; confident, boisterous, happy. I would lose interest in things I loved like video games, or performing. Everything was nothing to me, but this big black hole I couldn't escape from.

When I couldn't hold it in any longer, I would easily get angry, or hurt, and irrational.

Most people didn't even have a clue I had depression, and that's the ugly thing. Sometimes the "happiest," loudest people can be the most unhappy and unfulfilled.

Where It All Started and What It Lead to

At the tender age of 13, I remember getting those feelings of "not good enough." Of course, because I was going through the period where my hormones were running rampant, doctors and teachers assumed that was the cause of my unwillingness to do much of anything.

At the time, I was living in virtual hell. My parents were hitting each other, hitting me, and blaming me for the root of all their problems. Being 13 was hard enough, and to throw that dysfunction into the mix turned my world in a way that most likely had nothing to do with hormones.

This started with a downward spiral of toxic behavior, including self-harming, anorexia, and suicide attempts. I was convinced by the age of 18 that things only got progressively worse when I found myself homeless, and had almost failed the entirety of high-school.

Finding myself with no stable home, and seemingly no caring peers and adults, I turned to alcohol and partying. Determined to throw my life away since it was so "worthless." If my parents didn't care, why should I? If my "friends" and teachers were so adamant that my situation wasn't so bad after years of being beat and molested, maybe I really was overreacting. Maybe I was a terrible person with no right to self-worth.

The fact that it all started out with a little 13 year old girl with sad thoughts, and it had manifested into a self-loathing like no other, astounds me. How can one little thought of, "I'm not worth it," lead to something so destructive and ugly, whether the circumstances are ideal or not.

The Healing Process

The truth of the matter is, the people you surround yourself with, and the situations you walk through in life do shape you. With that being said, your circumstances don't define who you are as an individual. Your experiences shape you, but you are not those experiences.

What I mean is, being a former homeless teen doesn't make me just that. I'm not simply an abuse victim, or a former high-school student who had bad grades.

I'm someone who likes to write, sing, play video games, and somewhere in-between that and the self-hatred, I lost sight of who I really was. Simply defining myself as someone who couldn't get out of bed, and who stared at the ceiling for hours on end; I defined myself by those negative experiences, and most importantly, untrue thoughts.

It was easy, too easy, to get lost in it all. By that point, I had no idea who I was, and neither did others.

It wasn't until I found a group of friends with different outlooks, did I begin the process of healing. For years I had been surrounded by those who were also convinced I wasn't really worth it, and to be told that I was worth it felt good. I told my self as time went on, that I had a rough time of it, but I was here and that meant something. I learned how to be more emotionally independent, and to not be so dependent on what others thought. It was like a domino effect, albeit a slow one, but a domino effect nonetheless.

Of course, everyone's depression and experiences are different, but we are united in the thought process of, "not good enough." Each person finds different ways of healing, and this is just mine.

At the end of the day, we're much more worthy than we, or even others, think. You are not the thoughts of others, and you're most certainly not the negative thoughts of, "I'm not worth it." We are all worth it, even if your head says you're not. The hardships we all endure are ugly, but we're here and that really counts for something.