I’ve been delaying this blog for a while. Not anymore.

After several drafts of linguistic gymnastics and repressed euphemisms, I’m jettisoning all that for stark words and blunt emotions: Depression sucks.

My soul caved partway through the first term of university. Pursuing a history degree without a plan, wandering aimlessly from lecture to lecture, and hours of socially anxious solitude sent my emotional innards crashing down. The next seven years or so were spent in a void. My body somehow finished school as a hollowed out surrogate. I was rendered emotionless. Entire days were spent speaking to no one while staring blankly at screens.

But this took its toll. The silent crescendo hit its apex in 2011. After a couple of years of part-time work and isolation, I couldn’t pretend anymore. At my lowest point, I finally sought therapy and medication. It was a slow but hopeful climb out of the abyss from there.

It was no one thing that defeated the emptiness that filled me for nearly a decade. Exercise and staying connected to people was crucial. Therapy helped unravel the web of negative thinking, while medication aided in stabilizing me when emotions trumped logic. It felt like a lot of work to reach a level of functionality that appeared to come naturally for many.

It’s an illness, and like all the other maladies, it sucks. The battles are long-fought and not always won. Life skimps out on rewards for the victors. My trophy? The fact that the me of seven years ago, the me convinced that betterment was beyond reach, was wrong.

My doctor told me to accept depression and anxiety not only as illnesses, but as lifelong baggage. They are a part of me, but as a whole I’m once again filled with feelings and greater clarity. The lack of the latter made it hard to seek help, even after hearing for the millionth time how important it was to talk and reach out.

This unfortunately required faith. To act without knowing the outcome. I was so embroiled in my emotionless vacuum that any steps for help were drenched in futility. I sprung out of recoil from hitting the bottom of the abyss. Many of us never take that leap at all – or worse, jump and get nowhere.

Part of me thinks I stayed away from seeking help knowing it was a last resort. If it failed, I had nowhere else to go. It’s a legitimate fear – but never a certainty.

To those of you reading this from the abyss: Make that doctor’s appointment. Do a workout. Call your friends. Find the things that make you feel even the slightest bit better. For me, that’s writing. I wrote the first words at the top of this page after a day steeped in sadness.

Not anymore.