Throughout my high school years, I spent a lot of days with no motivation to do anything at all. There were days where I would skip track practice to go home and sleep, and on my "good days" I would go home and resort to my best friend, Netflix. I only had to see my therapist once a week, but after a good number of visits, I realized that this lady that I barely knew was only pushing me outside of my comfort zone. All we did was talk, and I never noticed any difference in my sad moods other than I was just talking more. To me, talking more was just being outside of my comfort zone since I can be known as a shy, unsocial, and awkward being in unfamiliar social situations.

It took about a year of going to therapy, taking anti-depressants, that only made me feel crazy, and a one week visit in an inpatient program to realize that I couldn't depend on outside factors to "fix me." I had resorted to self harm and deep down I knew that this was not the path I should be taking. I had to take responsibility and figure out a plan to execute that would help me leave these dark and gloomy days in the past. I had lost friends, lost myself and pushed away family, which forced me to see that I had to take action to better my life.

One thing that I loved more than anything in the world was to run. I had joined the track team my freshman year and my track career had only gone up from there. Skipping practice to go home and sleep was not the way to excel even more in the sport I loved, so I decided that I needed to switch out my therapist for a new one. I began to rely on track to slowly help me return to the happy and bubbly girl I once was. Having to stay after school everyday to run pushed me outside of my comfort zone and enabled me to reach my daily dose of happiness, as I always knew that I was happiest while running. Gaining a second family, during track season, my support system expanded and my confidence levels grew because of the goals that I was reaching. Once I fully committed myself to track again, it began to turn my “sad” and “hopeless” days of high school into exciting and motivational days that enhanced every aspect of my life.

The thing with depression is that you forget that you, yourself, are your biggest fan. Nobody can help you like you can help yourself, and entering a battle with depression, fully unarmed, can quickly deteriorate any aspect of happiness that you had in your life. Although I do understand that it is not easy, people who battle depression need to understand that they can't rely on everyone and everything, other than themselves, to help them get better. The cliché way to go about things is to say that "everything gets better in the end." I believed that for a bit, until my mind began to tell myself that there is no end. But, that is when you tell yourself that "everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end," a quote I so dearly love by John Lennon.

So, I encourage you to remember that only you, yourself, have the power to change your life. You need to pick your "therapist" carefully and make sure that you can rely on them for everything. Life is short, but you have all the time in the world to make it worth it.