I imagine my mind as a canvas. I am the painter and my experiences and feelings consist of the paint. There’s a multitude of patterns, of splats, of blankness. Looking from afar, others could see this as any other painting, but to me, the colors are vacant. The colors fill the canvas but there is something absent from the frame. There is no yellow, no pink, or orange; black and gray fill up the entire canvas. No spark of color. It’s dull.

This is how I perceive the world. Everything is on a spectrum of colors inside my mind (which is ironic because I have a hard time distinguishing blues and greens and reds, pinks, and oranges). Everything is a fade of black to me. There is no spark and there is no light. It’s been my secret for years now but I am ready to confront the demons on the canvas and share my experience with the world. I am ready to face my depression.

My junior year in high school, I developed depression. I was sad, lost interest in many things, and didn’t find any excitement in the world. I became immobile and didn’t think that life had much meaning behind it. I was just a lost, blank paper in the stack of colorful murals. I hid this from everyone- my family, coworkers, classmates, friends, and I even hid it from myself. I tried to escape the vast abyss that I was living but it wasn’t in the best way possible. I would turn to things like drinking to avoid my thoughts and I would self-harm to become numb and finally have something to feel other than hopelessness and nothingness.

I did this all throughout the rest of my high school career and into college. I kept drinking and I kept creating marks on my body that I would hide from everyone. I was ashamed, not of the fact that I did these activities, but because I knew what kind of life this would lead into if I did not stop. I knew that if I didn’t do something about the way I felt that I could do something detrimental to myself.

I had this internal struggle. I would try to paint in colors of pinks and yellows but I would lose grasp of the brush. It would slip from my hands and onto the floor, creating a mess for myself. The urge to paint in black kept resonating in my mind. The hues were a comfort, something I was used to for so long. I didn’t want to leave my comfort zone that was slowly killing me. I would sit at home and do nothing, I would work as much as possible to keep the thoughts of my demons out of my mind, and I still fight my sleep so the colors don’t engulf me into a life I cannot describe. It’s at the point where I get merely 3-5 hours of sleep because I cannot tolerate the dark prison that I cannot escape.

I want to live a life where I can paint in hues of pastels. I want to live in a world where I can get more than 3 hours of sleep without worrying about what my mind will dream of. I want to live a life where I am not comfortable with the feelings that I feel right now. I don’t want to throw away my canvas filled with black and gray, but I want to add on with brighter colors. I want to create a beautiful canvas in my mind that I am not afraid to show and not afraid to live. I am going to beat depression, one color at a time.