I have depression. I have had it for a while but I’ve only been diagnosed in the past year or so. I have endured my first year and summer of college trying to figure out how to keep everything moving forward or at least not backward. I have not always been successful in this. Throughout the course of my second semester freshman year I had more bad days than good days with a number of neutral and easily forgettable days sprinkled in. I would go weeks without having a day where I felt positive, relaxed, content or even just like I could get through the day. Weeks without a day where I didn’t cry. Weeks without feeling wanted or appreciated. When the rare good day would come around I made myself feel so guilty for having a good day that I would spiral out of control of my emotions once again. This made for a pretty rough semester.

During the summer, I spent hours in therapy learning to handle being me. Learning how to listen to myself and trust myself. How to get through my bad days and appreciate my good ones. That last one has been overly applicable in the first few weeks back at school for my sophomore year. I have been reaping the benefits of my hard work this summer. I have had more good days than bad days and had plenty of opportunities to prevent myself from feeling guilty about my happiness.

One of the most difficult things for me to hear is when people tell me that there is no reason not to be happy. Now I’m not saying that a person can’t brainwash themselves into thinking that and just autopilot to “happy” every morning, but that is so much less of an emotion than true genuine happiness. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I am learning to not be ashamed of that. I am trying to surround myself with people who will accept that about me. I am learning that some people will try to change me to be someone they want to be around rather than accepting my for who I am and working with me to better those around us. I am forced to make difficult decisions.

I have so much farther to go but for now I can be content with knowing that it is ok to be happy. It is ok to create my own happiness. I can stand up for myself when others tell me to tone down my happiness. It doesn’t always come around often so I need to take advantage of it when I can.