Two and half a year of depression:

Dear Steemit friends:

 In life, we experience a lot of beautiful and painful things. Sometimes, we are at the peak of our happiness and success, other times we fall and sink deeper in the ocean of sadness and emptiness.

It all started with a story that I heard at a young age; a story about a drunkard who had two children, one of them grew up to resemble his father proving the saying “The apple does not fall far from the tree,” but the other child took a different path, he became a doctor and tried to help drunk people. The story was very simple and meaningful. But because I was too young, I thought that I had two paths only and everything depends on this choice that I’ll make.

My parent suffered from a certain psychological disorder for over 9 years, so I decided then to do my best to study psychology just like the other kid in the story did. But the flow of life was against my will. I lost all chances of studying the thing that I craved for years. I started then to resent my incompetence and circumstances and questioned why things didn’t go as I planned and fell in a pit of negative thinking. The only thought that kept repeating itself was that I failed to study psychology so I will eventually become sick like my parent.

I hated life and prayed a thousand times that I’d die before my twenties. I felt blue ,and  my world started to fall apart. I gradually started to change from that cheerful, energetic and social kid to a pessimistic and anti-social one. The first few days, I sat knees to my chest and my head on my knees in a dark room. I started to lose sense of time and the meaning of being alive. You can say I was alive but not from the living. I then started to distance myself from everyone. I slept the day and woke up the night, avoiding people and light. I holed up inside this safe container called me and waited for my time to come.

Days come and go, and I kept on killing time watching animes/ movies, reading novels/mangas and imagining myself in situations that never happened. 2 years had passed without me noticing, I am now twenty! Will death finally find me or will life hold on to me? There were times when I faked sleeping and surrendered to the thought that I’d die at the moment. But I realized that day wasn’t my last.

Scrolling on social media, a friend of mine, whom I considered my best friend not anymore, asked me why I dropped out of college and disappeared. I tried to dodge her questions but she was so persistent, I ended up telling her some of my struggles. Shockingly, she started laughing and said “Are you mad?” “I know you’re just faking it.” At that time I felt like Gregor Samsa when he opened the door of his room in Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

 Ignorance should have been included among the deadly sins. Nowadays, telling people you have cancer is easier than telling them that you have a psychological disorder. Once they hear about depression, PTSD, etc… they’ll run as fast as Bolt away from you.

I was so caught up in my own thoughts and feelings, and failed to realize that my parent almost recovered. When did all this happen? Recalling last year, I noticed that I always put a mask in front of my parent and showed how much I cared for her/him. I struggled alone to keep her/him away from getting hurt. Surprisingly, that worked like magic. The cure is simple, caring, and understanding. So what now? Isn’t it time for me too to move on?

I decided to suppress and ignore my negative thoughts to give room to positive ones. Searching for something I’d like to do, I ended up with innumerable ideas and goals which made me wonder ’Was becoming a psychologist my real dream? Or was curing my parent a priority that led to making the previous one my true dream? Or was I only influenced by that story?After thinking over and over, I realized that not being able to study psychology and staying at home was a shortcut to achieving my goal of helping my parent! Instead of waiting 7 years to help, I was able to unintentionally do it in less than 2 years. A blessing in disguise.

I dived deeper inside of me and found my broken mirror. I rearranged the pieces again knowing that they’ll fit in. What I realized is that in my reflection on the mirror, I was holding a hammer. I was the one who cracked that picture of “me”. I was the one who decided up on my sadness while believing that what I dreamt of was actually me. I denied my reality and believed that everything should go according to my dream. I finally understood that to find me again, I have to let go of that idea of what reality is. Only then, I would be able to sail and travel freely in that ocean called life. 

The story that I failed to understand all these years, makes sense now. The two boys had the choice to decide which way to go, there weren't only two options but an infinity of them. It's all up to you, you become what you believe to be.