“I am not my depression”

I knew it was building up throughout the years, but I didn’t realize I was depressed until it hit me all at once. I stopped seeing my friends. I grew further and further away from my family. I would just stay in my room and cry myself to sleep. I had started gaining weight as well. I would just spend hours in my room staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what could all of a sudden force me to get in to this state of mind.

I never really remembered being a happy person. I had my happy, and fun moments, but something always felt empty, especially since my childhood. It was the pressure of trying to keep up the image of the perfect child that my doctor-mother and engineer-father created, which I was far from ever becoming. It was the loneliness of being in the same group of friends my entire life, where I put in my maximum effort to maintain friendship, only to barely get minimal effort from them. It was the pressure of keeping it together, when my special needs brother had a breakdown, and my parents would just stand there and fight with each other on what to do instead of getting something done.

It was the feeling of not having a purpose and it was the worst feeling that had ever come over me. Over a year has gone by, and so much has changed – a different city and different people. Maybe all I needed was change, but after finding a group of people within a city that I’ve grown to love, who have felt the same way I have felt, has helped me start to fill the emptiness that was inside me. Yes, there are days and nights where I feel the emptiness grow, but I have learned to conquer them – to clear out the things that bring the most negativity into my life.