7 months ago I made a post titled ‘To the woman who told me I have a mediocre life.’ Shortly thereafter I deleted my Reddit account and sunk into a deep depression. I’ve been consistently depressed since I was 14 or so, but this was worse. I contemplated suicide (again) because my circumstances were such that I couldn’t see any possibility of future happiness. At 20 years old, I was broke, in debt, floating from shitty apartment to garage to couch to shitty apartment, coping with an eating disorder and at the same time a falling-out with a number of my friends. I lived in my hometown of ~90,000 people of whom I could relate to very few. Most of my nights were spent watching Little League games and silently imploring the kids to not end up like I did, destined for suicide through a slippery slope of bad decisions and regrets. I will always remember the feeling of looking at the sky and seeing only bruises.
Eventually things got bad enough that I realized I had to make a decision - either go through with my long-awaited death plan or make a drastic change. Staying in my hometown wasn’t sustainable any more and hell, why not try something new while I’m young and relatively free of real responsibility? God knows I have nothing to lose.
Through a family friend I managed to find a place to stay in LA for a month and within a couple weeks I was on my way. I transferred to the LA office of the company I was working for, then realized my job was part of the cause of my stagnation and quit. Within a relatively short period of time I found a new job which, while being roughly what one would expect of something that pays 50 cents more than minimum wage, didn’t suck the soul out of me like my former desk sentence. I met some new people, started allowing myself to learn from my past mistakes.
Tonight I was sitting on my front stoop, watching the sun set, and it suddenly hit me: I am happy.
My life is far from perfect, but for the first time I can truthfully say that I’m waking up happy. I feel as though I’m finally surrounding myself with the people I need to be around, I’m learning to be proud of the art I make, my bulimia has become less of a constant struggle and more of a battle scar.
I have to move to a new apartment in a month and I don’t know how I’m going to make it happen because I’m broke as fuck, but somehow I have faith that it will work out. Something will come together. I’ve got this far, further than I ever could have hoped, and I see no reason why my luck should fail now. I’m working, I’m eating, I’m trying my hardest. I measure my reward in days - days that I am reminded why I stayed. I don’t know what it was but something kept me going through the dark times and now I’m standing in the light and I have hope for the future. I forgot what that felt like but I could get used to it.
P.S. Thank you, C., for saying that to me. It hurt, but the hurt gave me the drive I needed to (eventually) change my circumstances. I hope you’re doing OK out there somewhere.
Submitted December 23, 2017 at 09:31PM by fmr_ghost http://ift.tt/2DDt7Cc
