EMILY

12/9/24 at 4:41pm

Senior studying English

I just want to know what excites you every day when you wake up?

Um. Do you care if I get, like, a little heavy?

Please, Emily. Speak your truth. This is your space.

Well, I’ve been depressed for quite a long time. And, it’s hard. I’m working on getting better, but obviously, it’s a process, you know? Something exciting is that I do feel like I'm finally coming back. I’ve been down for a while, but I feel I’m on an upwards slope. So that's exciting. Waking up and feeling like I have a real chance of conquering the day. I have a real chance to get my life back. That's exciting.

Hope is definitely an exciting thing. That is something that grounds me every day, and I think that's so powerful. Thank you for sharing with me. I want to know, where does your motivation come from?

This is also a little depressing, but I think my main motivation is to kind of dig myself out of the hole I’m in. Do you know the quote from The Fantastic Mr. Fox where he says, “I don't want to live a hole anymore?” That's kind of how I started to feel recently. I've been struggling for a while. Managing, but not thriving, you know?

I always think to myself, I just have to get through today, eery day. That kind of wears on you after a while. I woke up a month or so ago, and I told myself, I can't keep doing this, I want to improve my life. I want to be able to approach the day with more hope and feel as though my life is going well. 

I think that's kind of my motivation… I want to get there, you know what I mean? I want to wake up and know that I'm living the life that I want, which takes work.

I hope you know that I see how much you are putting into your process of recovery, and I am so excited to hear that motivates you each day. It is not an easy process by any means.

Yeah, me too. With so many of my problems, I was just afraid to take the first step. I was worried that it wouldn't go well. But, I finally worked up the courage to call my doctor, to initiate the process, to ask for help, to figure out meds. There are so many administrative barriers to care. It’s so hard, but it just takes some effort every day. 

Tell me a little bit about your relationship with becoming an adult. How does it feel to start to own that label?

That's kind of tied to everything I was just talking about. I feel like I finally have my life back. I feel like I’m in the driver's seat. And that’s huge for me.

I'm 22. And something that made me feel down for so long was the idea that I had fallen behind in life. I do live at home and I am struggling with so many things that society considers basic. Obviously, different people have different struggles. But, I don’t necessarily feel like an adult yet. I still feel 16 or whatever, right? These struggles have existed since then.

But now, I feel like like I'm trying harder to take control of my life. I feel more confident in saying that I’m going to graduate. And that helps me feel like I am becoming an adult, for real. It feels great to take charge of my life.

I am so excited to hear that you are taking that step. That is monumental. I want to know, is there a question you feel like you are still searching for an answer for?

Um, I don't know. That's a hard one. A lot of it is stuff about what my future will look like, but you kind of just have to wait and let that play out, you know?

This might be the opposite of an answer to your question, but I sort of have accepted that an answer will either come or it won’t.

The acceptance of what we cannot control is so difficult, but so important.

That is so true. I’m getting better at it. I’m working at not comparing myself to others, too. I used to be really resentful of others, especially when I was doing much worse mentally. I always assumed everyone else was so happy and that they had such a normal and regular life, whatever that is.

Then, I remember going to a party one night, and I talked to a girl I didn't know. She was so beautiful and had the cutest clothes. Such contrast to the hoodie I wore everyday at that time. She was very stereotypically put together. After a few minutes of conversing, we discovered we were both on the same antidepressant. That was a big, “oh!” in my life. I realized other people were living it too. I knew that, but it's hard when people seem so in charge of their life. When you really talk to them, though, you realize how most everyone just projects that.

Everyone is faking it as they go, I promise you that.

Exactly. That's all any of us are doing, I think.