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Description
As September is suicide awareness month, I decided to make a piece for it. Depression is like a wound that doesn't heal, essentially bleeding out until nothing is left. The range of emotion you once felt turns into a narrow range of numbness. The rose-tinted perspective from your childhood gradually degrades into cynicism and anger. Trust disappears and you are left only knowing how to kill or be killed. Everything eventually becomes too much: the last drops of blood drip out, your color fades away. You question everything and you curse the moments creating the initial wound that made your burn and bleed. When you reach this point the two choices are only to give up or beg for help. The former choice will only bring pain to others while the latter offers hope.

As you get help, you feel your heart beat again, the cool breeze rustling your hair, the sunshine warming your face. Life gets better and you feel purpose, but you realize you are different than who you were before your injury. You are a phoenix: nearly killed in a burning flame and later revived by the fire allowing you to fight. Your former innocence is lost, you hold on to bits of cynicism and are slow to trust. The darkness becomes part of the repertoire of your humor. Unlike the softness that once defined you, you have become powerful. The strength it took you to win the fight of depression turned your fear into boldness, as the trivial things in life are incomparable to the pain you went through. At this point, you may lament what you once were, but must learn to accept that you are powerful now, and more equipped to survive. Your strength and fighting spirit can make you a leader, an advocate, and a mentor for those currently going through your former fights to let them know that life does and will get better.

Description
As September is suicide awareness month, I decided to make a piece for it. Depression is like a wound that doesn't heal, essentially bleeding out until nothing is left. The range of emotion you once felt turns into a narrow range of numbness. The rose-tinted perspective from your childhood gradually degrades into cynicism and anger. Trust disappears and you are left only knowing how to kill or be killed. Everything eventually becomes too much: the last drops of blood drip out, your color fades away. You question everything and you curse the moments creating the initial wound that made your burn and bleed. When you reach this point the two choices are only to give up or beg for help. The former choice will only bring pain to others while the latter offers hope.

As you get help, you feel your heart beat again, the cool breeze rustling your hair, the sunshine warming your face. Life gets better and you feel purpose, but you realize you are different than who you were before your injury. You are a phoenix: nearly killed in a burning flame and later revived by the fire allowing you to fight. Your former innocence is lost, you hold on to bits of cynicism and are slow to trust. The darkness becomes part of the repertoire of your humor. Unlike the softness that once defined you, you have become powerful. The strength it took you to win the fight of depression turned your fear into boldness, as the trivial things in life are incomparable to the pain you went through. At this point, you may lament what you once were, but must learn to accept that you are powerful now, and more equipped to survive. Your strength and fighting spirit can make you a leader, an advocate, and a mentor for those currently going through your former fights to let them know that life does and will get better.