Longing for the Sea

the perfect present

The best gift I could receive is strength. Not physical strength to lift a car but emotional strength to persevere through difficult times. It's hard to gather the courage to fight against your own self-doubt when you can be your biggest bully at times. We are our toughest critic, and nobody else is so hard on us.

With this strength, I would have more confidence to stand up for myself when people are being rude to me. I already consider myself to be an assertive person, but there are times where I feel powerless next to people who show nothing but hatred. I wish I had all the strength in the world to put on a smile and pretend that their words don't affect me.

With this strength, I could shut down every negative thought I have about myself. When I'm suffering through an especially difficult bought of depression, it doesn't take long to believe the negative thoughts depression sticks in my mind. Depression disguises these thoughts as my own, and it makes me more likely to accept and believe them.
We're taught from a young age to act on our feelings. If we're sad, we cry. If we're happy, we smile. If we're hungry, we eat. If we're tired, we sleep. But what do you do when you aren't the one controlling these feelings? How do you retrain yourself to stop believing them?

These aren't the things we're taught in school. No teacher lectures about pushing through depression. Depression isn't something society likes to talk about period. This is why people with depression feel so alone. We make depression sound like an abstract and taboo topic, but it's something so many people suffer through at some point in their life. People with depression feel like they have to fight on their own, and that's hard to do when depression has erased every ounce of courage you once had.

I wish more people would speak out about depression. When I'm older, I hope this gift of courage will be something that pushes me to talk about my story and how I battled through it. I want to help other people who suffer from this because it is such a scary and difficult monster to deal with, and it's even more scary to deal with it on your own. I wish I could help people feel less alone throughout all of this and teach them that they are in control of their lives, and everything is going to work out in the end. I wish I could gift them strength by inspiring them to keep fighting and never give up.

I already have strength and courage. Without it, I wouldn't have lifted myself out of the spiral of depression I was stuck in back in February. Without it, I wouldn't be able to shut down all the anxious and negative thoughts I have throughout the day. But there are some thoughts manage to slip through the cracks, and those are the snakes that I want to exterminate with the strength you would gift me. This strength would be the last piece of the puzzle, and they would make life much easier to get through.

Without this extra gift of strength, I would still be able to survive life. But if I had it, it would make life much easier to live and enjoy.