The prospect of uprooting your whole life and moving to a new country is a scary one, I would know.
The prospect of uprooting your whole life and moving to a new country when you're in the midst of a terrible bout of depression is absolutely terrifying.
Unfortunately, I also know that all too well.
Yesterday marked 4 months exactly since the day that the switch was thrown in my brain.
4 months of darkness.
4 months of never feeling quite "right." 4 months of fighting the monster that is my own brain at times.
4 months of trying (and usually failing) to stop self-harming.
4 months of almost always having someone around or even not staying at my own house so I wasn't alone (my best friend is a saint, btw) and was safe from myself.
4 months of finding out that recovery doesn't mean your fight is all over, it just means that you're still deciding to fight no matter how hard that is.
But here I am, still fighting.
Here I am, marching forward into the future.
Here I am, doing what I have always dreamed of doing.
It is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my entire life.
There are days that I want to pack up and go home to what's familiar and easy.
There are days that I don't want to leave my bed.
There are days that I wish xacto knives existed in this country.
There are nights that my brain plays dirty rotten tricks on me and I wake up on the verge of tears.
But then there are days like today.
There are the smiles from my students.
There is time spent with my fellow teachers.
There are afternoons of laying in our new hammock.
Sometimes the cuts on my legs are healing nicely.
There is joy.
There is hope.
I'm not sure how many times before I left I asked, "But what if I can't do it? What if I can't handle it? I can't even handle normal life..." But I know that time and time again I was not only assured that I could, in fact, do this but also that if it came to it, I could leave.
While I don't think I would leave no matter how bad things got, there is peace in knowing that I'm still here. I'm doing this. I'm still fighting. There is peace in knowing that I can do this, even on the hardest of days. Even if there are days that I don't want to carry on, I can keep living my dream. Because while those days have the tendency to be many, they will always eventually pass.
I have come to accept that fact that I may not get "better"while I'm here. I know this isn't the ideal place for healing with my support system so far away. But I know that I will make it through this year. I know that should I decide to seek professional help when I get home (I'm strongly considering it) I will have an amazing network of people who love me standing right beside me, holding my hands through everything.
I know that no matter how bad things get, life is not about asking, "What if I fall?" Life is about asking, "What if I fly" even when you feel like flying is the last thing you are capable of.
