Life After Depression

If you wanted to read about life after depression, you came to the right place. I could just about make a legal guarantee that it exists. My simple act of writing this article is proof positive that there is truly life after depression.

It was a long, hard road. I grew tired of the burdened, uphill walk and sometimes did not think I wanted to make it to wherever I was going. But now I'm standing at the top of my own success. I have conquered the mostly environmental depression, severe anxiety, panic attacks I endured for the majority of my life.

I was so depressed for over five years I wanted to die. Nearly every day I would wake up and start crying just because I woke up alive, because dawn came for me again. What the hell did the dawn want from me anyway?

I would see a huge semi truck and feel my feet turn eagerly towards the oncoming traffic. I would cook dinner for my boyfriend and press a sharp knife on my wrists. I wanted to be as cold and lifeless as the pistol I often held in my lap to tempt, taunt and invite Death to take me in his silencing arms. I was hitchhiking on the highway to Hell but no one would pick me up.

At first I thought it was my fear of the ultimate rejection from the worlds beyond who didn't seem to want my company. I considered it might be sheer cowardice that wouldn't let me blast my brains all over the bedroom wall. But it was neither of those reasons. I didn't kill myself because I didn't want anyone to have to clean up my messy unwanted carcass.

So I packed my back-pack and hid it in my studio, ready to go. In the spring I was going to the woods to kill myself where hopefully some poor animal wouldn't choke on my rotting meat.

It was March and the season was warming, calling me to the woods to my chosen demise, when my boyfriend upgraded his laptop for work and handed me his old one. I remember sitting down that very moment and I started typing away. I was writing the longest suicide note there ever was, but in a fictional prose.

It was weeks before I even got up from writing except to pee and sleep and make the meal I ate over the laptop. My boyfriend let me write all day long without any flak what so ever. By June I had quit the strip club I worked at and wrote for six hours a day and then two more at night. I wrote until my eyes would shut on their own, demanding that I sleep. And that October, at what I now see was a halfway point in my book, I remember sitting across the dinner table from my boyfriend. I had a strange realization, something I recalled like a past dream. I looked at him and blurted out in awe:

"You know, I can't remember the last time I thought about killing myself." He said that was good and we ate in a comfortable silence.

That was four years ago this week. Four years. Now when the dawn comes, I greet it so eagerly I got a timer coffee pot so I could get at my wondrous day even quicker. I even dance in the rain again. But only where and when my neighbors won't think I'm absolutely nuts.

I gave myself the time to heal, to realize all my depression came from outside influences, and the poor view I had of myself was a direct result of a bunch of jerks that weren't caring or smart enough to give a kind word to someone who needed it.

Somehow, by the grace of the worlds beyond I thought was denying my presence, I ended up writing my own kind word. I took the time to literally find myself. I wrote myself out of my depression. I know my personal limits. I know who I am now and I'm way cool. I deserve my own kind and supportive words, too. Just like anyone else on the planet, even the jerks that seemed to take delight in assisting my self-destruction.

I really do think I found love for everything and everyone through that time. But I also know to love myself first and love myself the most. That's what the dawn wanted from me.

I'd like to share a kind word with you; a quote from my unpublished novel 'Masks of Nudity'.

"Melody had seen the darkest dark. And after what seemed like forever, hopelessly staring into that darkness, she gradually realized that not only were there stars in the agonizing void but they were slowly creeping across, what now proved to be the sky. And in that instant, she knew that dawn would come. Although the skies were dark for now, time was passing. The sun would rise again."*

Is there life after depression? Dawn always follows the dark. So stick around. Dawn is frigging fantastic!