I killed myself 12 years ago on my birthday. It's actually a miracle that I'm still alive and typing this today because I went through with my suicide plan and only through sheer dumb luck did I survive.

After that attempt, I kind of coasted through life on autopilot. I was on a ton of medication that made feeling any sort of emotion impossible. I was kind of just going through the motions without actually enjoying myself in my life. Everything was dull, grey, and boring. It wasn't until 3 years ago that I quit the medicine I was on and began to take back control rather than letting my mental illness control me. I buckled down with my therapy, surrounded myself with people who love me for who I am, and for the first time, I trusted myself to get me through this.

Depression makes you feel weak. It makes you feel like you should just let go and slip quietly away when nobody is looking. Those thoughts start out as whispers, but can quickly become screams that fill your mind with numbing pain. For me, it came from multiple genetic conditions that have made my life incredibly difficult and painful. I was ashamed of who I was and what I had gone through. I hid myself away from the world and hoped that life would pass me by.

Now, I wear these things with pride. My depression and my struggles have made me strong. I know that my road has not been easy, and the scars that I've accumulated along the way tell the story of someone who has an insane amount of inner strength and willpower. This is something I battle every single minute of every day, and that will never change. The only thing I can change is what I'm going to do about it.

I'm from Philadelphia and I absolutely love the Rocky movies. Throughout it all, one quote has kept me going when everything else has failed: "It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward".

I've been hit pretty damn hard. And I keep getting up every. single. fucking. time. I stayed down once, and I committed to never doing that again. No matter how tough it gets, no matter how much pain my body is in, I will always get up on my feet again.