Feeling Lost

Depression is no stranger of mine. It's been around for majority of my life, despite amazing friends, family and medication. The frustration that comes from not being able to "just snap out of it" is ever-present.

As I left a friend's birthday dinner early, feeling awkward and alone, I drove down a street I've been down hundreds of times. However, every single time, I feel uneasy, not being able to remember exactly where it connects to another main road. Each time, I feel lost and confused. As I drove beneath the overhanging trees, the silent streets lent no comfort.

My mind wandered to the thoughts I'd been having about how difficult it is to live, how much of a chore it has become, for someone so young. I thought about the amount I contribute to society, my friends, the world. As the street got darker, so did my thoughts. I realized no one was around. If I swerved my car off the road into the trees, no one else would be hurt, no one would even see.

I recognized the potential risk of these thoughts as I neared the above-pictured intersection. I reached out, I called my best friend. It was late and I got her voicemail, but just hearing another voice washed away the isolation enough to reconsider. I sent a text to a close friend who talked with me for the next hour.

I had never wanted to cease existing like that since I was angsty teenager, mad at the world and livid with my parents for moving our family two hundred miles away from where we had been living, uprooting me during 9th grade. As I grew to love the place, those feelings subsided.

In all this, I realized that while I am just a small facet of the world, by making a permanent choice to a temporary issue, I'm removing all possibilities for the future--anything I could do, any love I could show, any growth I could encounter...gone.

I'm still here. I have bad days, just like anyone else, but I'm still here. I'm glad.