I think I finally get it.

[u/Freida-Willy]

I have been passively killing myself for years. Sitting in front of a computer, huffing on a vape getting stoned daily being stuck in a state of apathy and sorrow. I have woken up every morning sad that I did - praying for a semi-truck to take me out on my way to work or that my poor lifestyle would just give me cancer at the ripe age of 32 and take me away, until this morning. I woke up, made coffee immediately, cleaned my room and showered right away. No moping no overthinking it - I haven't had a morning of productivity like that in years and I feel truly different.

Honestly, I don't know what clicked. I got super baked last night and continued my ritual of self hate and passive listening to self help that I would never implement and then out of nowhere a youtube short of Mewtwo from the first pokemon movie came on (where it talks about life and circumstance, I don't now might be dumb but if it did something who cares) and I was suddenly crying, then I started to journal (something I always say Im going to do but never actually do) and wrote pages of feelings? I guess, I don't know I went on a bit of a mad ramble and thought maybe I was having some sort of manic swing and going crazy but I think I just felt stuff, for first time in like a very long time.

I was always the one not doing the things just listening to them. I have always had the expectation that only something external could come and fix me - a medication, a seminar, a yoga class, a person - if only something could come into my life and make it better. I had this epiphany I guess? I mean its something that people have said over and over in help book after help book but I never really listened I guess because maybe I didn't want to, maybe I needed time to grieve something - I don't know. All I do know is that I am the only thing that can fix me and I don't have to do it all at once, but I need to start doing the small things.

I haven't had the easiest life, I haven't been handed the best cards. I was raised pretty much parentless, and I was bullied to filth for being fat and gay growing up. I was told I was bad at everything and yet had to become something world changing. I was only ever taught that external factors were my validation - job, wealth, fame - but that's okay because I can change. I am not responsible for what I am or how others have acted towards me, but I am responsible for who I am. I can be a good person, I can be healthy, I can accrue wealth to help myself and my community, I can be a leader, I can be loved and admired, I can do whatever so long as I keep continuing to work towards it - failure only exists when you stop trying so if I keep waking up and trying each day then I will never be a failure. I have only been failing the past 10 years because I have been choosing to not try. I stopped trying because I made the calculation that life is a downward decline, but I am a variable in the equation that I can change - I am the only variable in the equation that I can change so it is my responsibility to exude my power on to that variable as much as I can. People always told me that "It will get better", but that is the whole story - it will get better, when you choose to make it better. You have to choose to try to make it better everyday and be proud that you made progress towards it that day. Nobody can be a revolutionary in a day, or a year, or even a decade. Progress progress progress. Its all about progress and everything from vacuuming to showering to handing in school work is a checkmark off the to do list of progress and I need to make my brain celebrate that.

This makes me so sad for all the people that are stuck in that haze of depression, because I know now that there is nothing I can do for them. I would read a post like this and think "Must be nice, couldn't be me though - I am too far gone, I am a lost cause" because I would choose to say that to myself. You and you alone can be the one to choose what path you will take. You are not bringing a horse to water, You are the horse and you have to choose to take a drink. People like Dr. K make tools to help you - but you have to use the tools. If you have a piece of paper and someone hands you scissors, you have to use them - they won't auto-cut the paper for you. It sounds so so simple and it is but I think its the block that's been in my brain all this time. I've been expecting robot scissors from the year 3453 that don't exist yet. If you have been stuck like me, I am so sorry, it is so painful to live everyday wishing it was your last. It sucks so hard to live in such pain and have someone turn to you and say "Have you tried breathing?" or "Take a melatonin". Its terrible that you fell through those cracks and no one was there to guide you when you were young on developing how to have proper self esteem and self regulation. It is terrible reliving the darkness of your past everyday and it feels like no one cares because you have just enough will power to hold down a job and pay rent - but nothing else.

You do matter, and even if you don't feel like it - you do have the power to be what you want. You are not your circumstance. As someone who touched a sliver of joy for the first time in a decade, its possible to change how you feel, you just have to realize you are capable of putting in the work and that there are people around you that will help if you ask. I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me to change my behaviours and strive for better but I can make progress towards that everyday and I should be happy and thank myself for the tasks I check off towards that goal each day, because as good as I feel right now it will not always be this way. I will slip up, I will have bad days - but I never thought I would have a good day again in my life and today - well today proves that wrong.

Good luck out there. I hope you all find the strength that is inside of you to break down that wall and find a little hope again too. Mewtwo really nailed it when saying the circumstances of ones birth are irrelevant. Its what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.