Ryan J. Faer

No one person’s mental health journey is the same. But, whether it be depression, anxiety, or anything in between, we all surely share some similarities on our road. I’d venture that we can all find common ground on the occassional (often continual) thought that the struggle will never end, that our darkness has no bounds or limits.

The feeling can be overwhelming. Even when we commit to doing the “right” things – gathering support from friends and family, professionals and medication – we can often still feel like we are merely treading water, burning an awful lot of energy just find ourselves falling under in the end after all. It sure can feel that way at times, can’t it?

But, should we persist long enough, I believe we all too find another commonality between our diverse paths: progress. The light.

Oftentimes, however, progress can be difficult to discern or appreciate because it happens on a gradient along the journey. It starts slow and imperceptible. We all love to have a goal, an end point. But progress is not an end point, like “finding happiness”. Rather, progress is finding a way to live all feelings of the human condition – the fleetingness of happiness, the heaviness of grief, the malaise of apathy, the dissonance of loneliness, the neutrality of contentness, the freedom of peace.

I am one of the fortunate ones. I have been to the bottom, the darkest, the most lost you can be. I have self-loathed, self-medicated, self-mutilated, self-sabotaged. I’ve seen glimpses of the light only to feel like I will never see it again. I have nearly burned it all down all in the name of trying to achieve “happiness”. But like a rebirth, from ashes I have found the inevitability that comes as a product of time and persistance: progress.

What this decade-long cycle has shown me is how counterproductive it can be to yearn the end-state: to idealize what you think life should be – happiness and love at every turn, success in each endeavor, fullfillment in all aspects of life. And the futility of letting the weight of never feeling any closer to these outcomes sully the progress you are actually making by simply rolling out of bed each morning – despite apathy, despite emptiness, despite the gaping holes life often presents us – and continuing to build something of yourself (and those around you) within the day given before you.

The very fact that we find a way to put one foot in front of the other despite all that life often lays upon our shoulders is the very thing that should give us pride for all that we our accomplishing by doing life the best that we know how; the very thing that should fill us with hope for the abundance of light that is hiding beyond whatever darkness lay before us, and fuel our journey forward to the next minute, hour and day.

It can be really hard to feel this in the moment, in the thick of it all. In the process, I can certainly tell you that I did not feel pride or hopeful very often. In fact, more often I felt trapped, dejected, and tired. Very tired. But, despite making questionable decisions in my coping, I was, however, determined to keep going. And, so time and persistence did their thing.

And now I look up – ten, fifteen years later – and see all that has been built of this life thus far: a family who has stuck with (and grown with) me in spite of the burden I am sure I often imposed; a sustainable career; one dog who was cared for until the very end, and another one off to a fantastic start in life; physical health; a place to call home; options and hobbies and friends. If I could somehow amass this kind of “fortune” by just waking up each day – with reluctatance most days – imagine you could do if you stacked up a few more days of cautious optimism and appreciation than I was able to muster over those years?

Again, not everyone’s journey with their mental health is the same; surely not everyone will find the peace and contentedness that I am thankful to be experiencing in this moment. And look – as rosey as I make it sound, I still have my moments (and often days). Just yesterday I was a surprised to feel that emptiness I knew so well. It is always there, likely never really gone for good.

But, that is exactly to the point, isn’t it? It isn’t about the final product, the destination, or some kind of a steady–state of happiness. Who knows what is around the corner for you or me tomorrow? People and loved ones, jobs and homes – like the seasons, they come and eventually they all go, as will we all. When we find a way to appreciate the things and people that we have right now, the progress we are continually making each day by just moving forward, learning to celebrate the good, cope with the bad, bear the ugly, and moreover, simply embrace it all in its entirety… that is when we start to realize that our mental health journey is not likely to come to some kind of conclusion, but rather, it is something that will run concurrently alongside all of the things that life has to offer us.