Baking

This week has been rather depressing. I needed to snap myself out of it before I got any deeper and gave into it fully so I decided to do something lighthearted and fun. I baked a breakfast cake. There's something very cheerful about cracking eggs, whisking wet ingredients, and getting flour everywhere. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe because I'm doing something productive? Because I'm treating myself? I'm not exactly sure of the reasons, but it makes me feel better. Then when the baking is done I get to enjoy the deliciousness and I've previously expressed my opinions about certain types of foods being potentially helpful. Anything hot and straight out of the oven is definitely on that list. On a different note, I want you all to know that giving up is never worth it. I was having a really hard time with something important to me this week and it fell through twice (to my great disappointment) before working the third time. If I hadn't been persistent about trying to make it happen after failing repeatedly, I would still be stuck where I don't want to be. So when it seems like nothing ever works out for you (like it did for me especially this week), don't give up. Something good will happen if you keep trying, I promise.

Change

Change is the bane of the depressed. At least, it is for me when I'm depressed. My brain tells me "What's the point? Nothing's going to get better. It'l probably get worse." Or if I really do want to make a change, I usually have no motivation to do so whatsoever, and try to just deal with bad situations I'm stuck in. For about six months, I've been stuck in a terrible roommate situation. My roommate yells a lot and takes her frustrations out on me. Coming home often feels like a bomb is about to go off and I spend most of my time shut up in my room trying to avoid her. Tons of people have told me that I need to just move, but I kept putting them off. I was used to being here. I was afraid of change. I kept telling myself that I could stick it out for a few more months until she moved in August and somebody else took her room. I kept myself in a harmful situation that was most definitely NOT helping my depression (in fact, it quite often made it worse) because I didn't want to make a change. Then I went home for a few weeks. I felt loved and wanted. There were still days where I was depressed, but there were people there who actually treated me like they wanted me around and tried to make me laugh and gave me hugs and I realized then that I didn't need to be in the kind of toxic environment I was in and that I needed to move. I'd been waffling about this decision for six months and when I was home it came to me loud and clear that I needed to move. I immediately looked into housing options. I put up an ad to sell my own apartment contract. I even started packing. Despite my fears, I had to physically act on making that change happen instead of just wishing or debating it out in my head. Now I have somewhere else to go and someone to buy my contract. Everything will probably be finalized this week. I'm still apprehensive about the change, because I've become comfortable (if that's the right word) where I am. But I don't want to be okay with my life when it's not the kind of life I really want to be living. Which is why I faced my fears and took a chance on change. Having something to do, something to look forward to, has definitely helped with my depression this week. I challenge all of you to make some sort of change this week. It doesn't have to be as major as moving. It could be something as simple as changing the way you walk to work and getting in some new scenery. Just try something to break up the monotony. Depression makes everything seem bland, repetitive, and meaningless. So spice things up a bit by breaking a habit or two and see what happens.

Happy Place

Have you ever been told "go to your happy place"? I have, and I was always kind of frustrated because I didn't really have one. Then today happened. I went to the beach with my family. The weather was great. The waves were massive and once I got past the coldness of the water, I spent over an hour boogeyboarding and jumping in the waves with my sister. After this, I wrapped myself in a towel, laid down on a beach blanket, and began to reread one of my favorite books while laying on my back. That was where I discovered my happy place, because as I lay there on my back, looking up at the perfectly blue sky, smelling the salty air, hearing the waves crash, holding a Kindle in my hands, and being surrounded by my siblings, I was 100% relaxed. That NEVER happens for me. I always have a baseline of anxiety. But not today. I was enjoying being near the ocean (one of my favorite things) and just savoring the moment. Now I have a happy place. When I'm stressed or lonely or depressed I will have that memory of when I was perfectly happy and content. It's a comforting thought. If you don't have a happy place yet, Ii recommend trying to find one. It might surprise you where it'll come from or when it will happen. But I promise, there are good things in life, and it is possible to find a moment where you are perfectly happy that you can hold on to when things get bad. Give it a shot.

Inspirational Quotes

I know this might seem cheesy, but bear with me. Last night I was utterly depressed. It hadn't been that bad in a while, so I knew it would rear its ugly head sooner or later but I didn't expect it to show up at midnight after I'd had a good day filled with family and fun. In hindsight I suppose I should have. It tends to manifest itself worse in the middle of the night and worse after good things happen, like my brain is trying to tell me that I don't deserve good things (which is not true). So I was feeling depressed last night. I was thoroughly hating my life, myself, basically everything, and my sister refused to talk to me anymore because I was "bagging on" myself. So I was left alone in my misery, needing to talk and having nowhere to go. I ended up writing a rather depressing post on one of my other blogs and adding an inspirational quote from Pinterest to the end to make it seem less depressing. But when I went to find a quote to include, I found a bunch of other quotes that I had already pinned that hit me like a ton of bricks. Surprisingly, those quotes set on hipster-y background images made me feel better-enough that I could go to sleep. Considering how when I'm depressed I have a really hard time falling asleep, that was rather helpful. I don't know if you guys have Pinterest accounts, but if you do, check out the quotes section. If not, use Google image search for inspirational quotes. They might actually work.