For a very long time, I was very sad.
I say sad, but the words doesn't do justice to the all-around, all-encompassing, and unending sorrow I carried around with me all the time. It hung like a weight around my neck, dragging me down, adding more slouch to my stooped posture and keeping my eyes downcast for fear of meeting the gaze of someone who might see the visceral tumult of my depression mirrored in my eyes.
I was very sad.
I wanted to die.
It started when I was eight. I used to deliver fliers to earn money. From a very young age, I understood the value of hardwork and the importance of standing on your own two feet financially. I also loved the outdoors. I loved activity and I loved movement. At eights-years-old, delivering fliers seemed like my ticket to freedom.
I have a clear memory of being out delivering fliers when I realised there was no freedom to be had...I'd had a run-in with my mom and sister. The type of "run-in" is too complex to go over here. Suffice to say the pair of them were unkind and, as I headed out to deliver the fliers that day, they were in my head. Worse than that, their voices had become my own.
As I walked about my neighbourhood, recriminations and hateful self-talk played on a loop in my head and I realised for the first time, I wanted to die and felt, with the sincerity of truth and fact, that I deserved to be dead.
The thoughts and feelings, once fully realised, took shape and took up residence within me and around me. Depression settled over me like a gooey cocoon of oozing slime. I perceived the world through this pustules barrier and the world perceived me through the same membrane of gore.
Depression had me in its clutches and I stayed that way for a long, long time.
It kept a hold of me until I was 25-years-old. My emergence from the cocoon was sudden. There was no elegance to it. I simply shed the sludge and left. I walked away from the people and places which had been marred by my cocoon-ish presence. Like a gooey snail trail, the scenery of my depression was spread across the city where I lived...so I left that too.
It wasn't running away. It was a shedding.
It was a shedding of skin, of pain, and of expectations. It was a shedding of the life which I had laboured under and allowed myself to languish in while I dreamed of departure. I shed my cocoon and headed for the city of Vancouver where I flourished. Where I loved, where I lost, where I triumphed and where I toiled.
I met the love of my life. We moved to Australia. We adopted three cats. We planted a garden together. Every night, I fall asleep with the weight and the privilege of his body next to mine. Each morning, I wake to the sound of birds outside my window, I breathe in the enticing aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a sense of gratitude.
I am grateful that I didn't leave this life behind. I am grateful that I didn't walk off the end of the world into the abyss of whatever comes after. I am grateful that I didn't let go and that I didn't give up.
More than that, I am grateful for the hurt. Without the pain, without the sorrow, I wouldn't be able to carry the message that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I wouldn't be able to hold hope over my head like a banner. I wouldn't be able to spread the word that it's not too late and the only way out is through, but to make it through, you have to stay.
Please stay.
And if you ever feel like leaving, reach out. Even if the only way out is through, it doesn't mean you have to walk alone.