I used to have months of depression and misery.

Now all that is left, sometimes, are days of confusion and discomfort.

That’s it.

And that is very good news.

In my past it has been predicted many times that the depression and anxiety and addiction were an integral part of me, and that my best hope was to learn to live with it.

To fight it, forever.

To cope with it (some medication was generally advised).

Because it was all very inevitable, too bad, unlucky, genetics.

But how wrong were all these expert opinions.

Wrong and disempowering and, actually, just naïve and stupid.

(Sometimes it still pisses me off.)

We are not a bunch of mental illnesses stumbling around, machines that can be tweaked by the right amount of specific pills, or by therapies that involve endless digging in times that are long gone.

We are not broken, so we don’t need to get fixed.

We can be truly fucked up, we can be paralyzed by doubt and fear and discomfort, we can feel pain and deep suffering on a daily basis.

That is all very real.

But there are reliable ways to recovery, there are choices and options, skills for wellbeing, clarifying realizations, healing insights and all of that can be found and integrated way quicker and more powerful than most people know.

I don’t think about it a lot, but I am doing so right now, and it’s pretty fucking miraculous to go from a life lived in darkness, to a daily appreciation of the light.

From years of despair to, well, profound and reliable contentment.

For a long time, I was in a really, really bad shape in all possible departments.

Physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally.

No hope, no clue, no way out.

Which turned out to be bullshit, all of it.

And I just think you need to know.

That’s why I keep reminding you of what’s possible, even if the experts have told you it’s not, or really difficult, or unrealistic.

I used to have months and months of depression and anxiety.

It was how I described myself.

It was what I believed, and what I lived, and what I got.

Now the only thing that is left, sometimes, is a couple of days of confusion and discomfort.

And that doesn’t even bother me too much, because I’ve noticed that they always turn out to be periods of exciting, invisible change, where stuff gets magically rearranged in my life and I always end up having new ideas and insights.

You are not who you think you are, and your past doesn’t have to become your future.

There are options.

There are people who want to inspire you and teach you and touch you.

There are ways of looking at life that will support your healing and growth.

There are cracks where the light gets in.

Many.

Many.

You’ll be fine, okay?

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(Photo by @simonrae, for Unsplash)