Silver Linings

I try to find the silver linings amongst the dark clouds in my life. I can't always, not right away. But eventually, usually, I can.

One thing about depression is that it hits whenever it wants to, with no regard to my feelings, my emotions, or my surroundings at the time it attacks. There is no forewarning. So suddenly, I am overcome with loneliness, sadness, and feelings of frustration because I know that I know that I KNOW I really have no reason to be feeling the way I do during this moment of darkness. Yet, unfortunately, it can't always be helped right then and there. I have to suffer through it, or rather, struggle through it, because I don't like defining it as suffering. There are worse things I could suffer. So I have to struggle through it and push my way through the tense darkness until I emerge exhausted in the light again, still perturbed, but slowly delving into how to make myself happy again.

Maybe it sounds simple, but it isn't. I can't just simply force myself to be happy, to feel happy, to convince myself that nothing is wrong and that my feelings are irrelevant, because they aren't. That's like saying what I feel when I struggle through a depressive moment isn't real, and I'll be the first to stand up and tell you that it is very, very real. Pushing through the darkness to emerge on the other side isn't a simple task, either. Sometimes it takes thirty minutes...other times, it may take closer to twenty-four hours. I can battle depression for a morning, or I can battle it all day. Like I said, the when and the where are not important factors for depression. It doesn't care.

Today was a rather uneventful day, until this evening when depression decided to rear its ugly head in the middle of my thoughts and emotions. It crept in, and before I even knew it, I had let it. It's like I'm in the moment before, completely unaware, then I blink and it's there, its presence made known to me.

If there's anything I want you to understand about battling depression, it's that it is a literal struggle. Phrases such as "Just be happy" or "You're too blessed to be depressed" don't have any effect on overcoming it. In fact, phrases like that make me feel either angry or guilty, because I already know I should "just be happy" and that I am, in fact, way too blessed to allow depression to get the best of me. Battling depression is like falling into a pit and making a long, slow, upward climb out of it. It tires me. It exhausts me. It makes me feel like I just took on the world. But, that being said, the silver linings are there. They are there even when I don't think they are, when I can't see them, can't feel them, and definitely can't experience them. In the midst of my depression, my struggle, my battle that I fight over and over again, the silver linings are there, always.

The silver lining for me this time is that, although depression is an unwanted part of my life, I claim victory over it every single time. Like I said, sometimes that may take thirty minutes, and sometimes, honestly, it may be a whole month of battling back and forth every day with feelings of worthlessness or loneliness (I know I'm not worthless, but I'm being honest with how depression affects me). Despite these battles, the victory is there.

Today, I overcame depression, again, for the thousandth time. I'm physically drained. Will it come back to haunt me again? Most likely. Will I be prepared for it? Not instantaneously, but after the initial shock of it, yes. Will I struggle with it again? Absolutely. But I will also declare victory, again, and win, again. It's what I do. I'm a fighter. And every victory is worth celebrating, no matter how small it may seem to others. If it's important and grand to me, it's worth celebrating, and that's all that matters.

Multiple people have told me before that I am one of the strongest women they know; I'm starting to believe them.