Recovery.

This comes in stages. You’ll have a day where you feel like you are conquering the world and everything is finally taking a turn for the better. Others, your depression creeps in during a weak moment and slowly eats away at you throughout the day. These days are the hardest. These are the days where keeping your head up is a challenge, where plastering a smile on your face doesn’t come so easily. These are the days we fight our asses off to overcome.

Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, divorce, losing a house, or whatever challenges you may be facing the weight of them becomes nearly unbearable. They always seem to sneak in when you are at your highest because depression doesn’t want you there. Depression wants to break you down and take it all away from you. It’s these days that we prepare for, that we fight through, that we put every last ounce of energy into shoving that voice down so that we wake up tomorrow.

These are the days that we need our people. Yet the thing about depression is that it also convinces you that you’re a burden. It tells you that you shouldn’t ruin their day or make them worry about you because you don’t deserve it. Because you aren’t worth worrying about. Depression is so manipulating and convincing of your worthlessness that in those moments you truly believe that by leaning on those you love you are complicating their lives. It convinces you to push away so that you can protect them from what’s really on the inside. Depression is an evil bitch.

So how do we recover from those days? We wake up.. We have hour long conversations with ourselves to get out of bed. Sometimes it takes all day to convince ourselves to get up. And then we take a step. And then another. We fight a battle that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Yet we somehow find the strength to keep moving and pushing throughout our day. That is recovery. Fighting like hell and not quitting. That is how we have the good days. We don’t let the bad ones define us, and we fight like hell to survive the next one.