A year later and I’m doing fine, thanks to all the wonderful friends beside me, my beloved parents, and most importantly, myself. Even with that help, it took me two years, maybe longer.

But even through all of the pain, I did it. No thanks to you, of course, but I beat you. Now I know that I am an amazing, talented, brilliant, beautiful young woman. I’m not a little girl anymore.

I believe that I’ve passed the test to become something greater than that.

A year later, and I’m doing better than I ever have before. A year later, I’ve discovered who I am. I’m a writer, a musician, a woman without depression, a mountain climber and a mountain mover. I’m an advocate, I’m a shining light, and I am me. Nobody else could’ve done what I have just like it; I am an individual and a human, and I deserve better than you.

So go ahead and lie to yourself, and pretend that you’re an A-bomb when you’re really an A-hole, pretend that you’re a mountain when you’re really a staircase, and that you’re an ocean when you’re really just a teardrop. Go ahead and try to plague me with your insecurities, but I am no longer a prisoner of my own mind. I have a voice, two eyes, two ears, and a heart. I can feel emotions like nobody else because I know what it’s like to be afraid of happiness, and I know what it’s like to be comfortably sitting in your own sadness for months on end.

So this is me checking out, gathering my things, moving out, and moving on. This is me trying to save lives with my story. All I ask is that you remember me, because soon enough, the scars – physical and mental – will fade, the attempts on my life will be just a memory, and you will be just a bad dream: I’ll wake up to the sunshine, shake the nightmare from my head, and walk into a new reality.

This is me, a martyr, a liar, a stealer, a cryer, but not a statistic; this is me saying goodbye.

So you can live your life knowing that you’ve failed, and that one person who survived can stop others from falling down the same path. And that’s just what I’ll do; I’ll protect and help and serve as a light to all of those broken souls.

So at this moment in time, I stitch a wound that has been created in me by you, and I declare independence from whatever you are, may it be a monster, a notion, or just a feeling we use to describe what is happening to us. Whatever you are, you tried to destroy me, but you have failed.

And to all of you that are still struggling with getting where I am now, know that there is hope. You may not see the light at the end of the tunnel, because you might have to stop waiting and make one. I did.

And goddamnit, it was hard, but it was worth it.

Now I am free. Free of depression, free of the grip it had on me. And you can be too. The reason it’s so hard is because it’s supposed to be. Just don’t forget who you are, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll figure that out along the way.