A reader recently brought this up to me in a comment on a guest post of The Bipolar Writer Collaborative Blog. I never was really able to put it into words until they did it for me. I have live nearly my entire life depressed. My mother doesn’t believe that I was depressed during my childhood, but I tend to disagree. The odd thing is, I got used to being depressed, used to suicidal thoughts, and developed my life around surviving the day. But now, I feel much better. I am no longer depressed, I like to say in remission, but cured works too.

What do I do now though?

I mean, my entire life has been centered around surviving. Now I don’t have to think like that anymore. Most people would be jumping up and down, celebrating nonstop, crying tears of joy, but not me. I am terrified! I effectively lost over 20 years of my life. My whole world has been turned on it’s head. Yes, it’s for the better. Yet, that doesn’t change the fact that everything I knew, now has nothing to do with moving my life forwards. It is a very uneasy place to be. My therapist and I equated it to being in a row boat on the open sea during a stormy night. The boat is incredibly unsteady, and it keeps feeling like it will flip. My life, until now, has been constant fighting. Fighting is all I know, it’s all I’ve ever done. But now that I’ve finally gained some semblance of normalcy in my life, I’m basically starting from scratch. Adulthood, and self dependence, in my mind, really starts at the age of 17. So I’ve technically lost 8 years, that those not suffering from depression, were learning how to live life. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing! I go to work, I pay my bills, I save some money, I eat meals, I clean (sometimes), I’m looking for new hobbies, I spend time with family and friends…what else is there? What do I do now that I’m not depressed? How do I live life without fighting to survive?

I write this, not to instill fear in you, but to make you understand. There is a life beyond mental illness, and it is really different than living with mental illness. I know it sounds simple, but I find it very profound. Once you get control of your mental illness, and the symptoms are managed, you have to spend almost all your time developing new life skills. Yeah, most transfer over, but a lot of what you do to battle your mental illness, isn’t necessary during a mentally healthy life. Again, I don’t want to scare you, I just want to prepare you. Mental illness is beatable, I’m living proof, but you have to also be prepared to adapt to your new, healthy life. It is really weird, uneasy, and generally scary. You will get the hang of it though, just as I will. You just have to allow yourself time to adapt. It’s not like a switch is flipped and you instantly are a mentally healthy person. There is still a lot of work that needs to be put in. Life is still very hard, and generally sucky, you just get better at dealing with it. From my mind to yours, Alan Wolfgang, signing off.