When I Ran Out Of Courage To Keep Fighting, I Wrote My Way Through Depression

Last month was the worst.

Every night, I would try to shut my brain for the day and tell myself tomorrow is another day. Unfortunately, as if the Great Universe conspired to bully me and belittle my battleground skills, unwanted thoughts would always get in the way.

I would take a deep breath, stare at the ceiling, try to fight the pain, but the demons would always win. I always came into the battlefield defenseless, but I was never hopeless. Hope is the only anchor that keeps me alive.

And then I would wake up feeling empty, like there’s a hole in my chest that I can’t explain. I won’t tell you about the hell I went through, but if you’re a girl who always get catcalled slash poor writer slash anxious, you’ll get the picture. To say that I couldn’t find the motivation to get out of bed was an understatement. Long ago, I started to accept that perhaps I am an eternally lazy human being. But I was far from that–my family and co-workers can attest to that. As the symptoms became crystal clear, I found out that I’ve always been depressed.

Because when you can’t find a reason to go on, would you even want to face the world? Or worse, get out of bed to do the same old things? Work like a robot in the office, go home, try to sleep, repeat until dead.

I could try to talk with my best friend who lives on the other side of the globe, but we both know that trying to comfort each other through the screens of our phones is not a permanent cure. We can’t be physically there for each other, after all. I can hear Taylor Swift whispering in my ears: bandaids don’t fix bullet holes, bitch.

When the pain becomes unbearable to the point that my eyes become watery and it becomes even more difficult to breathe for no apparent reason, I would console myself by putting my emotion into words.

I won’t care if my sentence construction, grammar, and punctuation marks are correct. As a writer, you would expect me to become conscious of those rules, but when it comes to writing my pain, those shits don’t exist. I would let the words flow non-stop as if my life depended on them and I won’t stop until the tears aren’t there anymore and my breathing becomes normal again. Funnily enough, I even had the guts to submit those writeups to several platforms. That’s what happens when you’re depressed–you’re vulnerable and yo do crazy things you wouldn’t even consider doing in the first place when you’re fine. And then it dawned on me:

Last month was one of the best.

Looking back, I realized that despite being the worst month of my life, March has also been one of the best. I even wrote a blog post about thanking the Great Universe for all the wonderful things that took place last month and to be honest, I almost forgot about the days I cried in public and nights I fought the monsters inside my head when I realized that. All 11 writeups I submitted was published on those platforms, and I couldn’t find the right words to describe what I felt when I realized this.

At the times when I couldn’t find the courage to keep fighting, I wrote my way through depression. Writing has always been my therapy and it hasn’t failed me ever since I published my first post in my personal blog. I’ve always known this, but I never knew that it could help me overcome the worst month of my life. And boy, what a month.

I welcomed April praying that this feeling wasn’t just the Great Universe’s way of fooling me. And even if it was, I know what to do now. If the monsters were to come to my door again (which is very likely), I’d turn my depression into art and hold on to the belief that if writing saved me last time, it would keep me sane today and for the rest of my life.