10/10/2023
Photos taken exactly one year apart, and let me tell you - I have no idea what I wished for last year, but I do have a moment of reflection for the woman who stood there one year ago, and the state of mental health she was in compared to the woman who stood there yesterday, making another wish hoping to become a dream come true.
The thing with depression is that sometimes it feels like it’s just never going to get better. I’m not new to dealing with mental illness. I have struggled with it since high school. But the thing about this past year is that I thought I had been through the worst of it before. I thought I had been through some of the worst periods of depression only to come out on the other side, and thought it meant it would never get as bad as it was back then again. I was wrong.
The last year has humbled me. Im smiling in both photos, but the reality is this past year HAS been the darkest of my life. And there have been many, many days where I didn’t know when that darkness would end - and if it would ever get better again.
The universe has stripped back all sense of false realities around me and brought me to my knees. I was thrown into survival mode and have been desperately trying every damn day to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. I know everything I’ve been through is for my highest good. I needed to be humbled. I needed to experience everything I experienced so that I could learn how to keep MYSELF grounded, and safe. And while it’s felt like one of the loneliest years of my life, I know that isn’t the reality either.
But the thing with depression is that most days, when it feels like it’s getting better, there’s still a piece of you that wonders if this is truly the worst you’re ever going to go through, or if the darkness will just keep pulling you under until it swallows you whole.
We are exhausted, yet we are also resilient 🦋
Some days it feels like I havent made progress. But then some days, I FEEL the shift in energy and the weight of the past year lifting off my shoulders.
I know sometimes it feels like it may never get better.
But then, sometimes, it just does. ❤️
🦋