I Thank God that It Gets Better

I think journals are amazing. Just last month I was sitting with my parents at our dining room table and they were reading from their journals about their first encounters with each other. (P.S. It wasn't very flattering, their first written words about their future spouses were about how one seemed clingy and the other appeared stuck up.) This prompted me to get back to journaling, which I haven't done much of since I got back from various travels this summer.

A little bit about my journal: It's adorable.

I really liked the owl design because of all the allusions to Athena, goddess of wisdom, the arts, and war... She's cool. But I didn't actually get this journal for myself. It was a present from my most recent ex-boyfriend, which sadly means that this journal records the implosion of that relationship. But I'm not here to talk about that. The main point is that during those few months I recorded in this journal a few of the darkest points of my life.

I've struggled with depression (well, been diagnosed with it) for about three years. It's taught me a few things: it's allowed me to empathize with others and for those with whom I can't empathize, it's easier for me to sympathize. I've also been able to examine why I few myself and the world the way I do (thank you cognitive therapy), but mostly I've learned to be thankful for modern medicine and for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I also have a new perspective for why we as children of God need to struggle.

Currently, my depression doesn't affect me very often, at least not in any debilitating way like it did this last February. While I was reading through my previous journal entries, I came across these heartbreaking pages from February 5, 2017:

If you can't quite read the two, the left picture reads "This Life Thing Sucks" underlined, as if written as a conclusion. The next page followed with a list of pros and cons about living in general. My specific items on the list aren't particularly pertinent, but you can see that the 'cons' list was much larger than the 'pros'. This by far wasn't my worst moment from that semester, but visually, it saddens me the most. 

During this time of my life, or any of the times where I've been at my lowest, I pull up this post/message/tweet thing I found on Facebook years ago. I don't know where it came from, but I've found it all over social media:

"At 17, I was a depressed teenager

who self harmed and wondered

about just how painful it could 

possibly be to end my life.

"Right now, I'm laying on the

couch, and I can hear my husband

reading our four year old a 

bedtime story using silly voices.

"Life gets better. Make sure you're 

there to see it."

Getting out of a depressive episode, whether it lasts hours, weeks, months, or years, isn't the kind of thing that can only be solved by getting into a new relationship, getting a job or promotion, losing weight, or any of those 'things' that you may want out of your life in order to be happy. 

For me, a big part about getting back to my old self did include cutting a toxic relationship out of my life, but I was only able to do that after I worked on myself, realizing what I was worth and what I wanted out of life. A much better journal moment came when I found that I wrote down my goals for what I wanted out of life, and ideas for achieving them. This idea came from listening to Elder Russell Ballard's talk from the April 2017 Annual General Conference. This is just one example of how I would not have been able to recover from the dark place I was stuck in were it not for the priority I put on my relationship with God.

I am now glad to say I'm overall happy. Is my depression gone? Heavens no. Will I probably get into another terrible slump? You betcha. But I can recover, and I did recover this time because of the faith that I have in my Savior, Jesus Christ. Because he was willing to undergo all pains and afflictions possible, he is able to comfort me and help me through anything.

On paper, not much is different about my life. I'm in classes that are the same difficulty, I have the same number of friends, I live in the same place. The only difference in my life description is that I broke up with someone I should have broken up with a long time before. In general I look the same, I have the same amount of work on my plate, and I still do not get nearly enough sleep. But I feel different. I'm more hopeful and I feel more confident in whatever God has planned for me and whatever God will let me plan for myself. And if you don't believe me by these words just look at how much longer my 'pros' column for my 'being alive' list has gotten:

I didn't even bother adding a 'cons' column this time.