Kimberley D

I have suffered from and still continue this ongoing battle against depression and anxiety.

I first started suffering from it in University, in my last year life was changing rapidly and I started not wanting to leave my bedroom. Life stood still. People carried on as normal and I looked on, amazed at how they can carry on with their day to day lives while I felt stuck, unable to move from the spot I was in. I didn’t want to do any work and being my third and final year, it was very important to graduate, ready for the next stage of my life.

It got so bad that a few times I would end up crying for no reason and contemplate suicide. Once, that happened around my boyfriends house and I had a plan all ready to end my life, I remember sitting there crying hysterically planning to pack my stuff, get on a bus and go down to the river and drown myself. My boyfriend then suggested that I should seek help from my university and so, I got in touch with the university’s mental health support. They provided me with counselling through the university which helped me tremendously. I went to my GP and got anti-depressant pills which I took off and on, just because I felt that I was already better when I took them. I thought I was cured…but thats the thing; depression can be an ongoing process and an off and on process, its not something that can just be overseen or discarded into the back of the mind and never heard from again. It impacts your life in many ways. I managed to finish my degree and just scraped through.

I currently am still suffering from depression and take the anti-depressant pills but it has helped me live a life I once thought I didn’t deserve. I go out with friends, family, co-workers. I do activities, I challenge myself every-single-day to do something different, go out of my comfort zone, ask questions that my brain believes is stupid and not worth it to ask, I talk to strangers in and outside of work, just to make sure that I can beat this depression, this black hole I am in. My confidence is gaining, I feel like I am slowly coming into myself. That the person who I once was? who is dying inside me, is now slowly being pulled out to the surface.

Will I fully come to the surface? Will my true self give into this dark beast inside of me? I will not allow it. For everyday I have shown how I can overcome even a small battle against it, I WILL overcome this. And so can you. Speak up, call out till you are blue in the face if you have to, show how you aren’t a sufferer but a SURVIVOR. If you can even do the smallest thing like getting out of bed and do one thing that your brain tells you that you can’t. Know, that you are fighting it, you have conquered that part and you WILL come out of the darkness.