Maybe I’ll save it for a rainy day…
Sophomore and junior year of high school were the absolute worst years of my life. While battling the worst part of my depression to date, my life was a whirlwind of disappointments. I gave up photography for a portion of time, the most important thing in my life and what happens to be my major in college, as well as stopped going to dance, the sport I grew up doing since I was three years old. Luckily I was blessed with having a great support system. Even though my friends could never truly understand what was going on with me at the time, they tried their best to do everything in their power to make me feel better.
For my 17th birthday, one of my best friends from home made me a pile of open when letters. They covered everything from “Open when you’re feeling happy,” “Open when you cannot fall asleep,” and “Open when you need a tad bit of inspiration.” These letters are what got me through some of the roughest patches of my depression, however to this day, almost three years later, there is one open when letter I have not opened: “Open when you feel…confused, idk, worthless, sad, stressed, depressed, and like everything is going to fall apart in about 0.2 seconds.” That statement rings a cord within me and perfectly describes how I constantly felt three years ago. I woke up every morning with a heavy weight on my chest and felt as though at any moment it was going to break me in half. The anxious pit in my stomach made it hard to get out of bed in the morning and get ready for the day. It made me want to sleep all day. It made me want to hide. However, after all that time I still never opened that letter. Every time I felt overwhelmed, I would tell myself to wait to open it, that there will be another time that will be worse than the one I was experiencing in that moment. Eventually, three years later, I can finally say I have not felt that feeling in a very long time.
So now this letter sits in a basket in my room with all of the other open when letters waiting to be looked at. However, I just glance at it and think that maybe on my happiest day I’ll open it and see what it says, but for now it’ll sit on my shelf.
There are still some bad days when I want to go back to bed and ignore the world, when my anxiety is sky high and walking out the front door makes me cringe. But each day I heal a little more and remind myself that it’s just a bad day, not a bad life.
Maybe one day that letter will be opened or maybe it never will be.