By Sandy Rodriguez |Staff Writer|
This is the story of how I saved myself.
In 2014, life was on a downward spiral after the tough moments of life simply got to me—I reached some of the lowest moments of my life.
During the school year, I visited the CSUSB Psychological Counseling Center several times.
I was diagnosed with depression, which is not uncommon among college students.
About 30 percent of college students report feeling depressed, which disrupt the students’ ability to function in school.
The week before finals in the Spring 2015, I decided to finally get on mood stabilizers, a common treatment for those diagnosed with depression. They made me drowsy, so I stopped taking them after two months.
In August 2015, I got tired of the consistent crying and feeling sorry for myself. I was beyond disappointed with myself.
I felt I was neck-deep in a hole. I didn’t know how to get out of.
But I had to start somewhere.
My first “cleansing” step was to forgive all those who hurt me.
Hate and rage did nothing positive in my life. I wasted so much of my energy on people that did things that hurt me to my core.
Hating them did nothing but destroy me.
Next, I decided to drop everyone who didn’t bring happiness or positivity to my life.
Life is too short to have meaningless relationships. I like deep conversations, whether it’s your earliest childhood memory or your deepest hopes or dreams.
If I couldn’t hold a decent conversation with you about life, you were out.
No more senseless energy on people who only drained me: mind, body, or soul.
I deleted over a hundred phone numbers. Most were people from my past who I had simply grown apart from.
Once deleted, I had 72 contacts left.
Most of those were family, a couple a friends, a few professional contacts and a handful of restaurant phone numbers—most were pizza and taco establishments, my two favorite carry-out foods.
After, I deleted most contacts, I changed my phone number and only gave my number to my closest family and friends.
I didn’t want people who brought me down, contacting me and tempting me to go back to old habits.
The only reasonable thing for me to do next, in my opinion, was to disable my Instagram and Snapchat.
I went a month without social media before I decided to go back on Instagram because I was so lost on current family news. Keeping busy and focused seemed extremely hard when I wasn’t at work.
I began reading books, half of which I never finished because I wanted to start reading the next one.
Exercising, hiking, spending time with my loved ones, writing in a journal, driving, and going to random places alone helped me.
Doing self-fulfilling things all helped in getting myself to a better place. At the end of the day, I have to be my own hero.
No one can save you; you have to save yourself.
Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, “Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world: making the most of one’s best.”
Leave a Reply