Hoping to See the Light Soon

Over the past year, my depression had gotten worse, to the point that I couldn’t leave my bed or be motivated to eat or to even do things to help myself. I had lost all of my hobbies and stopped talking to people and lost connections. I was isolated without purpose.

I used to use my hobbies as my outlet, and when I had no desire to write or create anymore I realized just how bad my mental health had gotten. It got to the point that I couldn’t give my emotional support pets the attention that they needed and it fostered a lot of guilt and added sadness.

However I felt as though I had no reason to feel like that, and I still do: I have many opportunities to succeed but something in me tells me that I can’t and that I only take up space. I believe I have no purpose and no worth in any aspect of myself.

A few weeks ago I started a new medication called Pristiq. I had tried Zoloft a couple times in the past and stopped taking them after a few months of feeling exactly the same. I thought maybe nothing would work until I went back to the doctor and was prescribed this new, more expensive medication.

Immediately I began to have side effects that I had ever experienced with Zoloft: Headaches, some days with a lot of energy, frequent crashes where I would nap like I died for an hour an a half, and decreased appetite. From this I knew something had changed.

At the end of last year, I attempted a new outlet: vlogging! I had hopes that if I recorded myself every day I would be more motivated to get up and get out in order to have things to show the camera and have a sense of accountability. I fell in love with editing as it was something to keep my mind busy. It helped even though there would always be a segment of me crying, but around November 12th I took a break from my 4 week long posting streak. Vlogging has been the one thing I have been able to do consistently.

I returned to it mid-January and I have been enjoying it! And the longer that I took Pristiq, the more I felt the desire to get back into the old hobbies that used to bring me joy.

I’ve decided to start with something light, and here I am. My goal for this month is to have a blog post for every week of March, and to shift the focus of my writings to be more personal. I was using required writings as an excuse to have less creativity in my website. When I began my blog in 2020, I had no idea of the changes the world would go through and how writing on my blog would have changed.

From the excitement of documenting my travels to writing about things one could do from home, writing was my comfort place, and that is the time I wrote my best work. Once things started to try to go back to normal and I started college, I found it hard to dedicate a lot of time to sharing about myself and to connect with others because we weren’t isolated anymore; we had to readjust to living in a new sense of normal.

Connection is still something that is important to me, even if I feel as though I do not have many real life connections. I know I have outlets and a means of reaching people even for a short while whether that be from the back of a postcard to a video or a page on a website.

For the month of March, the theme of these weekly blog posts will be to relearn how to be personal and open up. This will be the first entry in which I work on things that I have been struggling with since my struggle with depression became unmanageable, and I hope that by opening up, some of you may relate and be encouraged to share things about yourself to others without fear.

If you would like to keep up to date with my day-to-day life, my YouTube channel is here!