How to Get Out of Depression

I’ve bounced from low lows to high highs

so many times.

So many trips up and down inside.

Right now?

I’m dancing on air.

The lightest I’ve ever been,

Always comes after the darkness.

I emerge,

I remember I can breathe again.

And actually, I’m better at it than I was before.

What felt like drowning, was learning to swim.

Retreating in, to find deeper wisdom, and resilience to weather the feelings.

When I’m in it, everything hurts so bad I forget who I am.

It feels like I’ll be lost forever.

But,

I never am.

Something clicks and I’m climbing out somehow.

Just yesterday, I was upside down, convinced,

“I’ll never get unstuck.”

Then something struck.

A block dislodged, and suddenly

I’m in the eye of the storm

and I can see the clear, blue sky above me.

Hope.

Fragile, but delicious.

A tiny sip of fresh air.

My heart opens and I start over.

Doubts come, and I’m easily knocked down by tall towers of who I think I should be.

The smallness of feeling thousands of miles from my dreams.

What is right in front of me never seems like enough.

But that’s a lie.

Faith is hard to hold onto, in the face of so much fear,

so much conviction that it won’t matter.

That I don’t matter.

That my house of cards will fall

(and it will).

But never building feels like death.

So I use every, single, brick.

A smile from a stranger. A moment of self-honesty. A salad because leaves taste like life.

One small “yes” to trusting myself.

One small step.

Then another.

So if you look up and see a crack,

build toward the light.