The One Thing I Want to Be Told When I'm Struggling With Depression

I know I don’t need approval from other people, and most times I don’t want it either. I believe in doing things for yourself and not others; so most of the time I don’t really care what they think, because I didn’t do it for them, I did it for me. But sometimes it would be nice for someone to walk up to me and look me in the eyes and say: “Well done.”

Well done for getting up this morning. Well done for taking your meds. Well done for studying when you wanted to just curl into a little ball and cry your eyes out. Well done for getting back up again even though all you want to do is just lie down and admit defeat. Well done. 

I don’t need them to say I am doing a good job, because that is almost irrelevant (and also probably not true). What matters more than that — what matters the most — is that I got up and tried. And I tried when the last thing I wanted to do was try. When trying was the most difficult thing on the planet, I still tried. I know I am no superhero. I am not even just an ordinary hero. Nor am I a soldier or a cop or someone who faces a battle every day. But that doesn’t mean that I am not a warrior.

I am a warrior. I am fierce warrior who wakes up every day knowing that from the second I wake up to the moment I fall asleep I am going to be battling myself. I know that it is going to be an uphill battle and I may not even know what “winning” means, looks like or feels like. But still, I need to try, and I do. Every day. I can’t let the loss of yesterday affect the fight in me today, or think that the victory of yesterday will make today’s battle anymore easy.

Each day is a battle and every day I must fight. Every day I will fight and I will try. I may not succeed, but I can’t ask anymore of myself but to try my best. I understand that and I am OK with that. I don’t have a sword or shield, but I do have friends, family, a support network, therapeutic techniques, chocolate and so much more. Each day I need to arm myself with these, square my shoulders and attack. The goals and aims are simple enough, but achieving them can be hard and tiring.

So every now and again, instead of someone losing their patience with me because I can’t do something or becoming irritated with me because it takes me longer than other people to do the same thing, it would help me so much more if they just took a moment and recognized that battle within. Sometimes all I need is for someone to recognize the warrior and say: “Well done.”

Unsplash image via Joyce Huis