It’s Been 5 Months Since My Worst Depressive Slump…Here’s What I’m Up To
There’s hope on the other side, you will get through this
About 5 months ago I experienced the worst depressive slump of my life.
I was miserable at work and felt no purpose or passion behind what I had to do for 8 hours a day, five days a week.
I would wake up 20 minutes before having to go to work and immediately after returning home, would go back to bed.
Every time I FaceTimed my family or significant other, I would cry because of how sad I was. For a month straight I probably cried at least once every day. I remember it being a celebration if I could make it through the day without crying.
I could do no more than eat a bowl of cereal for dinner and I barely held onto working out every day and publishing on Medium 4x per week. I only worked out because I had a 100+ day streak that I didn’t want to break and I continued to write on Medium because it was the only thing giving me purpose. It was the only hope I held in such a dark time.
I lived states away from my family and significant other. I had no friends or community where I was living and was spending 100% of the time outside of work, alone. Which is a lot of time for someone who is a people person.
I dreaded the weekends because that meant 48 hours alone but I dreaded the weekdays because that meant going to a job I didn’t like.
Funny enough, the thing that pulled me out of my depression, slowly but surely, was checklists. But that’s another story, for another day.
What I want to write about today is where I am, five months after the worst depression I’ve experienced in my life.
Five months after the worst depression I’ve experienced I am:
- Living with my family again, only 40 minutes away from my extended family
- I’m following my dreams of becoming a multi-published author and am writing my first book
- I’m working a part-time job that has a great working environment and is something I enjoy doing
- I’m still working out every day and publishing on Medium every week
- I have an online community of awesome people on X
- I have a writing community where we meet every day via Zoom to write
- I’m able to reconnect with old friends from college since we’re in the same state again
- My mental health is doing a lot, lot better
I don’t know where I thought I would be five months down the line when I was experiencing depression. I honestly don’t think I even had the capacity to think about what I was going to do tomorrow, let alone 5 months down the line.
I also didn’t just randomly get better. I didn’t just wake up one day and choose to stop being depressed. It took over two months to fully recover from one month of deep depression. But I got there eventually.
But the reason I write all of this is to show you that there is hope.
If you’re in a dark time in your life right now, know that there is hope for you and your life.
I don’t know if it’ll take five weeks, five months, or several years, but things do get better.
It was almost impossible for me to think about being better. Actually, I didn’t want to think because I knew that would just make things worse.
I had no idea what would be waiting for me five months down the line, but I’m glad that I made it here.
I’m much more happier and know this is where I need to be in my life, at this current moment.
Things aren’t perfect and I’m not sure they ever will be, but they are better.
Wherever you are in life, whatever you’re going through, please know that it does get better.
I’ve made it to the other side (at least for now) where I get to live out the ‘it gets better’.
Just keep your sights on getting through the next day, the next hour.
Keep pushing for a brighter future, regardless of whether or not you know what that future will be.
I made it through and 5 months later I’m doing better. It’s worth it, to keep pushing, you know.
This life is hard and no one is immune.
Every day you wake up is a blessing because then you’re one day closer to ‘it gets better’.
