Today is my second birthday. Two years ago, after years of battling depression at the point of suicide, I reached a pivotal moment in life where everything I knew came crashing down around me and I began to see life in a new light. I was at the darkest place on earth when my friends reached the point where they could no longer handle the trauma of being my friend. I will be forever sorry to them for the pain I caused them and the stress I put them through. But I will also be forever proud of myself for pulling myself out of the darkness. While it may have been the single most painful experience of my life, it was also the greatest learning experience of my life. I am a better person because of it. I still experience periods of anxiety and depression but I have developed the tools to properly deal with those feelings. I understand now the importance of being honest about how I am feeling and seeking help when it is needed. I have learnt to value every person I meet in this world and treasure every relationship I have. I have learnt to be grateful for the gifts and talents I posses. I have learnt that in order to make the most of life I have to seek and seize opportunity. The world will not give itself to me. I will lose friends, but I will make friends. I will win and I will lose. Succeed and fail. This is the natural course of life. My job, and everyone’s job, is to take each experience and grow from it to become the best possible version of oneself. And I can honestly say, that at the ripe old age of 2 years old, I am the best person I have ever been.

Thanks for sharing this Georgiana!

 

You definitely deserve to be proud of how far you've come. Your attitude towards life is refreshing and positive. Keep doing what you're doing!

 

Best wishes,

SM

 

Hello Georgiana, congratulations also on coming this far. I wanted to pick up on something you said about losing friends because they could no longer cope with how you were at that time.

We often have discussions on the forums here where a loved one is at the end of their rope because they are trying to help someone and that person won't seek help. As someone who has come out the other side and now recognises that she was difficult to be around, if you could go back in time what advice would you give those friends of yours? What advice would give yourself?

Thanks JessF,

The main reason why I avoided discussing my issues and seeking help was because I didn't want to burden my friends or family. I kept telling them, and myself, that I could deal with it on my own. Obviously I couldn't.

What advice would I give my friends? Well, for a long time I was very angry at them. What kind of a friend would abandon me in such a fragile state? I blamed them and victimised myself. It took a while for me to forgive them and accept my own faults. I suppose the best piece of advice I could give is to just be there. When I think about how I felt at my very lowest point, when all I could think about was suicide, I remember feeling extremely lonely. I remember finding any excuse to text someone and staring at my phone wishing they would call. It really is amazing much a "Hey, how was your day today?" or a "Hey, we should catch up for coffee soon!" can change someone's day and even their mindset. So just be there. Be present, be persistent and be patient. And remind them in even the most subtle ways that you are thinking of them and that you love them.

As far as giving myself advice goes, I would have to remind myself the same thing. These are the people who love me, care for me and want to support me. Opening up and allowing myself to be vulnerable won't hurt them, but closing myself off and allowing my issues to pile up just might. I know I would support them through anything, so why couldn't I let them do the same for me? We're all human and at some point or another, we're going to need to lean on someone else. Sometimes you just need to let yourself be weak and vulnerable before you can heal.

Hello again Georgiana, thank you for a wonderful post!

You are so right, those little things make such a difference. And it can work both ways - the simple text from a friend can make us feel valued, but equally our interpretation that we don't get a reply from someone makes us worthless is a false one. People can't read minds, and with everyone being caught up in their own lives, sometimes even our closest simply don't realise what we're going through.  We need to spell it out sometimes.