"What's depression like?" He asked.

Happy Holidays ☃

It has been about a year since I wrote part II in this book. This year has gone pretty fast and looking around me there's not much that has changed in my life. 

Nothing but one thing, which is the fact that over the past year, I've gotten inbox messages, comments and Private Messages on twitter of people asking for help. My help. People telling me how much they enjoyed my book, that it had saved them and that they thanked me for writing it.

Over the past year I've gotten a new reason to live. Something that makes it a little less hard to get up in the morning, even though it still feels like everything inside of me is just a bunch of pieces, waiting to get put back together.

I'm still sad. I still get lonely and depressed. I still break down crying and yes, I still do hurt myself. 

But not as often. I get happy too now. I can look around me and for a moment not think about the emptiness inside. I can breathe and enjoy the fact that I'm breathing, instead of asking myself why I'm still breathing. 

Life is not easy. It never was and I think it will never be and so I have to get used to it. I have to get used to the fact that things almost never go the way I want them to go and that I have a hard time saying and doing the right things. That I'm shy and closed, left out and pushed around, called names and beaten. 

But I'm still here. Regardless of everyone who has broken me and has tried to break me, I'm still here. I'm still alive. I'm here, helping people who feel the same way as I do, while they go around messing up others. 

I no longer think I'm pathetic all the time. I have gained the ability, somewhere along the way, to look at myself and smile. Not because I like looking at myself or because I think good about myself, but because I've done something that's worth smiling about. 

So if you think life is hard, you're right. But maybe - and maybe means probably - you're harder than life and you can get through this what seems endless time of darkness.

I know you might not look forward to the holidays, because you have nobody to celebrate them with or because happy times aren't happy times for you, but just know that you're still here and that that means something.

It means that whatever makes you feel the way you do, hasn't gotten you down yet and the fact that it hasn't gotten you down yet, means you're strong. Probably way stronger than you think you are. And if you one of these days think that you have to kill yourself, because you can't take it anymore, stannd still and take a deep breath. You've come so far, you've fought so hard, it isn't worth giving that all up for something stupid as depression. 

You have to live for you. Give everyone who makes you feel like shit the middle finger, do things that make you happy, even if others say you shouldn't do it. Go out and meet others, if the friends right now aren't the friends you need. Sing annoying Christmas songs and do silly dances on the street, just to make strangers smile at your weirdness. Give money to some homeless person, buy a present for your dad who's always angry at you. 

If happy holidays hasn't got a meaning for you, give it a meaning. 

Merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

- Kyran