How to Stay Alive When You Don't Feel Like You Want To

A lesson in survival from my mental illness journey

WARNING: May be triggering for severe depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm

Depression is a real bastard.

If it's ever visited you, you understand.

I’ve spent three decades co-existing with my lingering sadness.

Such a clever and persuasive liar, it doesn't require facts to rob you of your hope. You can have all the evidence in the world in front of you that life is beautiful and that you're doing fine and that there is good reason to be grateful—and it can convince you otherwise.

Depression can mount a case for your despair so seemingly iron-clad, so apparently reasonable, that you find yourself unable to accurately see anymore: your family, your abilities, your marriage, your friendships, your achievements—even the simple joys found in an ordinary day all become invisible.

And when you are in that place of thick blindness, when you are so completely certain that everything has gone to hell it can be almost impossible to find a reason to keep going.

Little by little you eventually lose your impetus to stay.
The energy to continue gradually leaves.
Your perseverance departs.
Momentum ceases.

That's the thing that people who don't live with mental illness don't understand. You often aren't some caricature of a "suicidal person" continually wallowing in sadness and contemplating ending your life, as much as you are an exhausted person who has been so drained of hope that you now believe the lie that your mind tells you that things will never be better. You believe this terrible second is permanent. You think that the way you feel in the moment is the way you will always feel—and this seems (and if true, would be) unsustainable.

There have been many times when I have been close to that place, nearly fooled into fully surrendering to the misery of the moment. I know that there are millions of you out there right now who know this place well, who are standing in the hopelessness as you read these words.

And friend, the only advice I can give you is this:

Find one reason to keep living—right now.

It needn't be something at all grand or profound or consequential, just the smallest thing to stoke the fires of your heart here in this second.

Think of song that never fails to move you and play it—on repeat if you have to.
Watch a movie that always makes you laugh. It will probably make you laugh again.
Go to that place with the fish tacos that knock you out and order a mess of them.
Visit the woods or the beach, or whatever spot in nature allows you to breath deeply and slowly—and do that.
Snuggle a dog, paint a picture, take a drive, call an old friend, take a bath.
Look at the lines upon your fingertips and realize they have never been repeated in the history of the planet.
Lay back in the grass, watch the clouds pass in and out of your peripheral vision, feel the earth turning and realize it is time moving and propelling your forward.

This is not simply busy work to distract you from your sadness, it is an invitation to hear a dissenting opinion from the Universe.

Allow Life to come and argue on behalf of itself. Be reminded of the staggering beauty that you are surrounded by, even with the pain it comes with. This won't erase your sorrow or change your reality or magically fix the things within you that got you here but it may download just enough lightness into your mind to get you to the most important moment of your life—the next one.

That is the greatest battle with depression: pulling yourself through the present despair, to a place just slightly in the future where you may be surprised by joy or feel less tired or see something differently.

You deserve to experience that place.

Don't allow that lying bastard to write your story for you. 

Right now, in this difficult, unsteady, desperate moment, find one nearly microscopic reason to keep living—and live. Then look for the next one and the next one, until you find yourself slightly in the future and you can look back and realize you’re not where you used to be and it’s good to be here.

You are loved and worth fighting for.

Be encouraged.