Eventually, The coping mechanisms you built to survive stop working, and the harder you fight it, the more it just starts to tear you apart. Suddenly, you look in the mirror and realize you have no idea who the person looking back at you actually is. You don't know who YOU are. That's exactly where I found myself during my senior year of high school. I'd spent so long people pleasing that all sense of my own identity was gone. I'd become nothing but a collage of half-baked ideas handed down through generations with the caveat that you'll stop progress if you contradict what you're told to believe. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what I believed. I felt like I was sitting in an empty pitch-black room looking out a window. Outside of it was everything my eyes saw, but I could do nothing about it. My body was on autopilot, going about days on its own. I watched days, weeks, and months go by while completely unable to interact with the world outside my little dark room.  

     The sinister thing about depression isn't the sadness. It's the feedback loop it creates that prevents you from taking the actions needed to break the cycle. It tells you you're too far gone, that there's no way out, so you sit there. You wait another day. You keep living on autopilot. You know you need to change something, but every day it gets harder to make that change. Every day the voice in your head screaming that the only path you have left is the one you're on gets louder and louder. "Well there's always the other option," You think. I'm not exactly proud to say that I considered the other option, but when faced with the idea of spending the rest of my life living that dark empty room, it did often seem to be the better option. 

     That's the problem with dichotomies, though. They're false: logical fallacies used to prevent you from searching for alternatives. If you take the time to look a little closer, to really consider the possibilities, what you find is that they're endless. Sure, the path you're on might be the clearest. You might even think you know where it goes. The woods around you are scary, filled with trees, brush, and who knows what else, but as you examine them, you see footprints, small trails with destinations unknown. Finally, the thought that's been banging around in the background begging to make itself known bursts its way into your mind "If you don't like where you're going, go somewhere else." You step into the woods. 

     About mid-way through my senior year, I started buying new clothes. I made new friends. I grew my hair out and styled it in countless cringe-worthy ways. I had no idea what I was doing, but for the first time in years, my little dark room didn't feel so dark. Its window didn't seem so far away. Progress and recovery are never linear, though. Sometimes, when you don't know where you're going you end up walking in circles. Other times, someone says they want to walk with you just to pull you back to the path you spent so long trying to leave. I lived in these patterns for years. It's easy to do when you're afraid of getting too far from the path you know, but every time you venture out into the woods you start picking up landmarks. It gets easier and faster for you to get to that furthest point from the path, and every time you push it a little bit further. 

     In 2018, my little room was dark again. The window was as far away as it had ever been. I was back on the path, but this time, the asphalt was cracked. Road Closed signs sat in front of a washed-out bridge. There was nowhere left to go. This was it. The one path I thought I knew the destination of was gone. So I stepped back into the woods, knowing that this time, there was nothing to come back to. I found the rock that marked my furthest venture and kept marching. The longer I did, the less scary it became. I stopped hearing rustling in the shadows and started hearing birds singing in the shafts of light peering through the trees. The next thing I knew, I had friends and hobbies that encouraged me to be myself: to push further and further from the path. I was both literally and figuratively climbing cliffs and mountains that I'd never thought possible. Slowly but surely, I started to find myself, and every day my little dark room got a little lighter. 

     I'm proud of who I am today. I'm proud of how far I've come. I feel more comfortable in my skin than ever before, and I'm no longer trapped in my little dark room. It's springtime in the forest, and I'm no longer concerned with the path I used to rely on. Shame no longer controls me. I do. If everything goes right, I still have a long way to go, and so many sights to see along the way. My story is still being written, but it's not a sad one. I won't let it be.