When Life Gets You Down You Know What You Gotta Do?

I know how hard life can be and how easily you can want to give up. I've been there. I've felt hopeless, I felt worthless and I've felt like I wanted to end it all. I've also tried to end it several times. It's hard to imagine, if you've never been in that place before, how it feels when you're so low you want to end it all. I want to stress that attempting to end your life and not being successful is attention seeking in anyway, if anything it's a cry for help, and a cry to get better. 

I'm sure you've all heard about the suicides that occur on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.  Around 1600 people have jumped there, with the fatality rate of the jump being around 98%. Only around 26 people have actually survived the jump and there's always been these stories about their jump. I'm not completely sure if it's true or not but I thought I may as well mention it. Apparently, half way through the jump the survivors realise that everything they thought was a problem could, in fact, be fixed. Maybe not easily, but there was a solution to the problems and the emotions that they were feeling. 

I often this of this when I'm in a really bad place. If they realised that everything that they were going through could be fixed... Maybe my problems could be fixed too. I get so down thinking that I can't do anything to solve my problems, sometimes I just feel like I want to run away from them all. I tend to give up easily. My giving up can involve self harm, running away from my problems, attempts at suicide, panic attacks and generally feeling completely hopeless. 

I have suffered from depression since I was 7 years old. That's 13 years, which is a really long time. And throughout that time I have wanted to give up more times than I can count. I remember when I was 16 and doing my GCSEs, I was self harming, not eating, barely sleeping and was in an awful place. I never ever thought I would get out of the rut I was in and I would never get better. I thought I would fail all of my exams and I would never get to university. Here I am 4 years later, I may not be completely better, I probably never will be, but I didn't fail my exams, I passed them surprisingly well. It can get better, maybe not to the point where you are normal but you can get to a point where life is more stable. 

Whenever I think of how bad I feel or how down I am, I always remember a certain scene in Finding Nemo. Marlin is about to give up, and good old Dory tells him "When life gets you down you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming". And that's such an important message. I know Finding Nemo may seem like a silly example as it's just a Disney/Pixar film, but it teaches such an amazing thing. Marlin against all odds rescues his son and he never gives up, even when it seems impossible. I think that's maybe what we need to try and do. Never give up and just keep swimming. 

Stay awesome.