Becoming complacent with your sadness is one of the most dangerous things because then you’re not willing to, you know, accept that there are better parts of your life. You’re basically giving up on the better parts of your life if you’re willing to be sad and you have to want to get better and you have to be willing to take those steps. And it’s a lot of steps and it really fucking sucks. It’s a lot of steps and it can be really painful and sometimes they’re backwards steps and you know, it’s just, it’s a process but it’s your life. You have to take it seriously. It’s not like, oh I don’t need to take my medication. It’s not like ibuprofen for your twisted ankle, it’s your life. It’s how you interact with other human beings, it’s how you interact with yourself, how you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about other people, how you interact with other people

I essentially had to over haul my entire life because everything that I was doing was bringing me down, all of it was negative, there wasn’t you know very little in my life that wasn’t contributing to my depression. You know and it, when you’re in it you don’t think that way, for me anyway, I never thought, I’m doing this you know to myself but really so many of my choices were keeping me there. I was not you know maybe it started some people say it’s genetic some people say it’s hormones, I don’t know but my, my life choices were making it harder for me, you know it was just making it worse. The over haul of my life, it was certainly very hard there were moments where my depression felt worse. It felt like am I doing the right thing it was, my moments of self-doubt were very low, you know I felt, I felt like I must certainly be doing the wrong thing I must you know, I’m crazy for doing this for deciding to change my whole life in a month you know deciding to think I was ever going to get away from it. I thought there was a period of time when I said to myself no matter what I do I’m always going to feel like this, and that was a very low feeling thinking that. But I did start to feel better I kept on it and I did start to feel better

Once I moved out of my mom’s house, everything, doors opened up, everything opened up. There are valleys in front of us and we just have to seize them. We have to realize that, yeah you may have come from a really crappy background, our parents may not have cared or may have been alcoholics or drug addicts or abusive or not there at all or maybe they cared too much and suffocated you, but once you were out of that, the world literally is at your feet. And that was, oh my god if I had known how the world was at my feet when I was 16 and tried to kill myself, I would not have tried. I would have known that this is temporary, everything is temporary.

So I’d honestly have to say the last step of releasing my depression, I wrote a Facebook status saying to all of the people who have hurt me and have done something to damage me. I told them [coughed] that they should have been better things for you to do than to hurt me. You may have not intended it but you knew I was a sensitive person so just know you’ve messed up on having a really good friend.

And what really surprised me was that the people who’ve like, I’ve never talked to but were in the band with me called me on the phone and liked my status saying, You really took a huge step by publicly announcing that you’re not going to pretty much handle all of this crap anymore.

I feel like for a lot of people who come out as trans, it’s always a opposite. Like, you know, they lose their families or communities. They lose that support. They’re depressed or they try to kill themselves. And I have had the exact opposite experience I think because like, I don’t– I don’t know, I’ve always felt that burden and then I also don’t really have a secure family structure that I am influenced by or that I depend on or feel a part of. And so, yeah, and so I felt like wow, I can actually come into my own with no pressure and I can finally– I can finally be myself without, I don’t know being attacked by those that I care about. I can choose. I can choose to live a life I want to live now. And, yeah, and so I– I feel like coming out as trans like has helped solidify that– that belief of like I can make choices and I can– I can change if I want or not

So you just have to recognize that and that while you should support, I mean seek people who support you, ya know you shouldn’t, I guess you shouldn’t be super negative to them. Or make it their fault, cause it’s not anybody’s fault, not even your own

The last thing I said, it’s not your fault.

I think I was just really blaming myself and doubting myself for feeling the way that I was. And so once you move past that it just really, it just really opens doors.

Are you familiar with the spoon theory of chronic illness? I think it applies to mental health very well. So there’s this young woman and she’s trying to explain to her friend what it was like to live with chronic illness and I think she had something like lupus and then she was in a cafeteria and she was like, Alright spoons, alright ten spoons. She was like, I only have so many spoons each day. She was like, I want you to hold these spoons and then try and get through your day because everything you chose to do will cost you a spoon. So, you know, you’re getting ready for school, you know what I mean, you’re getting ready for class that’s going to cost you one spoon. And then you go to your classes and that’s going to cost you two more spoons. And now it’s lunch time and so you can either skip lunch and, you know, get whatever this, you know, paper or whatever done but that’s going to cost you three spoons or you can eat lunch and that period of time will only cost you one spoon. You know what I mean, going out to coffee with a friend, that’s another spoon. You know what I mean, by the time you get to noon you’ve already used more than half of your spoons. And so sometimes you have to choose, am I going to do the dishes or am I going to get some work done, you know what I mean. It’s a lot of, Am I going to get out of bed and go see my friends this evening, even though I know I’ll start with fewer spoons tomorrow. So it’s just being aware that sometimes when it comes to your own capacity, it’s kind of this zero sum gain and that you don’t have as many spoons to spend as everyone else.

It just started to go, it just it was just gone, like I didn’t really I’m not really sure how this shift happened but I didn’t have to fake it anymore. So, I’m thinking back to like how I was at work at that point, but I, once I began to start feeling better about myself, I felt better about my abilities to do my work and so I became more excited to go there and be around people and do a good job and get promoted and I did like from there I started to do better and, so I see that. I look back and I see reconnections with family members

I’m not trying to get rid of it any longer. I simply view it as an aspect of myself that I need to be aware of and work with. I kind of view depression like the weather. If it rains, I can’t really be upset about it. I simply have to wear a coat. And I have to be prepared for where my depression takes me sometimes. And I have to just understand that I need to give myself a break sometimes. But it’s not something that I think can be solved or cured. It’s just my perspective in life sometimes.