You are strong. You are brave.

Anxiety and depression. It is culminated in the constant thinking, worrying about everything, and letting it affect your life. The frustration, the self-loathing and the endless hours of time drowning in your own all-consuming thoughts.

I know it all because I’ve been there. Through every panic attack and mental breakdown alone in my room or in a room full of strangers, I’ve experienced it all. I can relate.

It’s easy to feel like you’re alone in it all. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re not good enough for others because of your need to overanalyze every little thing, where the thoughts race through your head at a mile a minute every day. That’s the problem with anxiety and depression; it makes it so easy for you to believe the

Anxiety and depression can be crippling. It grasps your mind and body and doesn’t let go, no matter how many times you convince yourself it doesn’t exist in your body. It can make you feel weak and useless. But, you know what? It actually makes you the strongest person in the world.

Imagine waking up every morning to face the same issue day in and day out. You are doing just that, facing your own inner demons every single day. And it makes you stronger. Your anxiety and depression is making you stronger, no matter how much it feels like it is eating away at your insides and taking over your life.

Not only are you strong, but you are brave. You are brave for not simply giving in. You are brave for living your everyday life even though your mind is telling you that it is not worth the pain. And anxiety and depression can be painful to the point where you feel the need to hole up in your room and let the tears spill out. Crying out the frustration becomes more appealing when your mind is constantly running at the speed of light, telling you you’re not worthy of the good things in life.

The demons you have to face are ones that live inside of you, and how brave are you to deal with them every minute of every day?
Even worse, it becomes so simple to look at others and compare yourself to them. Magnified by anxiety and depression, comparing myself to the world around me is something I find myself doing every day. I want to stop, but sometimes my mind won’t let me.

There are times when I look in the mirror and hate what I see. My mind is constantly telling me to be skinnier, prettier and just better. And guess what? You’ll believe it because who do you trust more than yourself? It is a never-ending cycle of thoughts that can keep you awake all night long. But it’s not just you.

Sometimes you feel embarrassed or ashamed, but anxiety and depression is something so common. Millions of people go through the same thing each and every day and they understand. The last thing you are in this world is alone in your fight against yourself.

It is time for us to stop feeling embarrassed for being in our own heads. There historically has been a stigma associated with anxiety and depression, but the more people talk about it, the more that stigma will end up becoming the norm.

Overcoming this won’t be easy or an overnight fix. But that is okay. And you need to remember that.

Each day that you get up and go on with life is a day that you’ve won the battle. Each day you take on the world is a little victory.

So, do one thing that scares you each day. Be brave. Because as those small victories become the norm, you’ll begin to realize that anxiety and depression may be a part of your life, but they certainly don’t define it. 

Depression is a journey and you can make it through

There’s no quick fix to depression. You won’t wake up one day feeling weightless. You will remove stones from your chest one day at a time.

It’s a slow process and some days you’ll feel just as heavy as months before. But one day you will wake up ready to face the day. It won’t be a perfect day but you’ll find yourself overcoming the gloom much easier.

It won’t rule your life anymore. You will sense it coming but it will leave just as fast. You will feel the darkness but the light will be there, too. You will hear yourself laugh when something is genuinely funny. It will be an unfamiliar sound but soon it will become recognizable again.

You’ll catch yourself smiling and it will reach all the way to your eyes. You will sleep through the night and wake up feeling well rested. You will go hang out with your friends or family and not make an excuse as to why you can’t make it.

Slowly you will begin to feel like your old self. You’ll have more energy. You’ll revisit your old hobbies and discover new ones.

People will tell you that you look different. You will think to yourself that you feel lighter. You lost the weight of the broken relationship. You lost the weight of the death of your friend.

You carry pieces of this time with you but it won’t pull you into the hole any longer. You will no longer feel as if you’re drowning.

You can finally breathe.

You will become worried that this newfound feeling is fleeting. But I assure you that it isn’t.

You have made it. You have found a way. You found the light.

It won’t always be easy to hold onto but you know it’s here. The light will never truly leave you.

Some days will seem dark but you will hold onto the flicker of light and it will persevere.

It’s only after you feel as if you’ve lost everything that you’re finally able to free yourself. 

Just one day at a time

Some people have this "all or nothing" mentality when it comes to healthy living. We need to realize that this whole all or nothing mentality is toxic. People feel like if they 're not doing it all, then their progress is nothing. And that is not true.

You either run every day or you're not a runner. You never have unhealthy thoughts at all or you're not recovering. You have to never eat fast food or you're not a healthy eater. You love yourself everyday and never have bad days or you're not positive body. You go out every weekend or you're not a social person.

It does not have to be all or nothing.

Every little bit is a step to a better life.

So if you ran yesterday and today you're not able to - you're still a runner and I'm proud of you. If yesterday you were okay but today you've fought the urge to restrict or purge since you woke up - you're still recovering and I'm proud of you.

If today, for the first time in weeks, you eat burgers and fries with friends or have pizza while on your lunch break - you are still a healthy eater. And I'm proud of you. Sometimes you fall off the wagon for months. Sometimes you tell yourself you’re gonna start fresh on Monday and by Wednesday you’ve already fallen back off. Sometimes you have to restart a 100 times and it’s frustrating. But it will be okay.

If you woke up this morning and immediately did not like yourself this morning, it's okay - You're still a body positive person and I'm proud of you. If you had to cancel your plans for the night because you couldn't deal with the anxiety, remember your friends still love you and they understand.

Just take each day step by step. Every run. Every urge. Every dining experience. Every negative thought. Because it's not all or nothing.

It's a little of this and a little of that and each piece turns progress.

You can do this. One day at a time

Don't let the monsters win

This does not begin the way they tell you,
The way they promise you as
you wait in the hospital watching
your friend heaving into a paper bag
There is no way for your body to
make sense of a poison so close to the
heart and so engraved in the mind
They will tell you it is possible to
live a normal life if you remember to
take your pills, and drink your water
and chart your feelings. Like a child
learning the alphabet, I have learned
my way through sad-angry-mad-happy
I have felt my way through the dark room
and slept at the foot of the monsters bed

He smiles at me in the dark, he tells me
He controls the light. You never know
When its going to get better.
The map it leaves is scars running
from your hip bone to your inner thigh
that no man will ever kiss in the moonlight
and you try the new words, tasting them
on your tongue –

“I’m okay.”
“I’m fine”
“How about you?”

Nothing could taste worse than the
uncertainty of being left cold and dead
in the arms of your own self.

My best friend tried to kill herself twice.
I remind myself of her presence, of the way
she is the sun in my sky, the moon in my path.
I cannot feel anything.

My heart stops in the base of my throat.
I remember what it feels like,
lying alone at the bottom of a bathtub,
lungs filled with water.

I have been learning to breathe since
I took my first breath out of that tub.

I have spent too many months,
washing my hands of my own blood,
Tasting the trouble I caused
on the inside of my gums
I am sorry for those I hurt
when I was trying to gauze myself up.

This is remembering that growth
begins with the rough plough
of a man bigger than a seed
But even trees grow larger
than any man.

I wait for the monster to turn on the lights.
Today could be a good day.
If only you take your medicine.
If only you make your train.
This begins with a word
Recovery
and it never truly ends.

This poem is for all my friends.
The ones who gulp for air, and the ones
who are scared to sleep at night.
The ones who became more than statistics,
and subway delays.

I’m happy your monsters didn’t win.

And

This is for every
Personal injury at track level.

I am here in your memory

Why must we romanticize depression?

My sadness was never beautiful. My depression was not poetic. It was swallowing pills and and laughing to convince everyone that I was fine.

Depression is not Lana Del Rey music, with smeared black eyeliner and tears running down your face. It is not a blood-stained tub, or the blade sitting across from you. It is not being rocked back and forth by a boy as he kisses your head and whispers “I love you,” repeatedly in your ear.

Depression is not the dread you feel when the person you love the most doesn’t text you back. Depression is disgusting. It is low and filthy and dirty and it eats you away, bit by bit. Depression is the stale smell of your room and your clothes, because you have no energy to clean anything. It is sitting in the bathtub for hours as you feel that dirty type of clean, letting the hot water run down your body in no aims to stand up and turn it off. It is the hunch in your back and the the defeated slouch in your shoulders, the kind that your parents always try to fix, exclaiming “Sit up straight,” but what good does that ever do. Depression is the hours spent lying in your bed, trying desperately to fall asleep but never being able to. It is your eyes being so heavy-lidded and the circles under them that don’t fade, even after a good nights sleep.

Depression is the sinking feeling you get when you enter school and your mind is already set - why would you care about your grades when you don’t even care about your life? It is the darkest kind of dark, the kind that intoxicates your brain and turns your best friends to enemies, your family to people you simply push away so they don’t have to hurt just because you do. It is the raw feeling of emptiness, the kind that gnaws at your very insides and leaves you nothing more than a walking skeleton, incapacitated and incapable of feeling anything but sorrow and sadness for nobody but yourself. Depression is the deepest hole you could ever think of, the only one you could ever think of because you dug it yourself. It is being not only unable, but unwilling to pull yourself up, having the darkness swallow you whole.

Depression is not rain. It is being unable to see the sun, even after the rain has passed.

We are more than just a number

We are more than numbers formed using calculations and logic. We are not just some tiny dot on a graph or a conclusion to be drawn. We are heartfelt laughter during a Friday night out with best friends. You are the tears streaming down your face, emotionally stripped and raw from a breakup; and just as equally the tears of joy when you are overwhelmed by the presence of God on a Sunday morning.

I am more than the number flashing across the scale or the inch where the measuring tape meets when pulled snugly around my waist. I am my favorite pair of jeans that hug in all of the right places and an old, worn-in t-shirt that is softer than the finest cashmere.

We are more than the countless number of magazines and advertisements screaming "You’re not good enough just the way that you are". Beauty comes from a place inside, so hidden that it could rival the depths of the ocean. It shines through from your soul, radiating from the inside out. It is reflected out into the world through kindness and compassion towards others.

I am more than the number of people that I have dated, loved, or slept with. I will not be labelled as a slut, a prude, or damaged goods — regardless of what people say or how many times my heart has been bruised. You are the equivalent of your personal choices and the freedom to do whatever you please.

You are more than your GPA. Your thoughts, intelligence, and character could never be added up and divided into a precise percentage. You are all of the adventures, mistakes and late nights spent with friends when you should be sitting at home quietly studying.

We are more than amount of debt you owe or the balance in that checking account. I am a part of places traveled and the experiences shared. You could be diving off a cliff, trekking through the rainforest or swimming underneath a waterfall. I am the places I have been. You are the adventures you've had.

You are more than a statistic stating that you are a part of a minority, ignorantly claiming that you will never be equal to the ideal, no matter how hard you work. We are determined, ambitious, and driven by our own hopes and dreams. We are striving to be the best possible version of ourselves because that is what truly matters.

We are not the number of days, hours, and minutes we have on this earth.

You are how you decide to use that time to leave your own legacy behind.

You are all of these little things added up into one infinitesimal sum.

We are alive.