17 to 18: My Experience with Fighting Depression

Preface #

I didn’t actually plan to write this blog post, but tonight while chatting with a close friend, I took the opportunity to share my long-held thoughts. I’ll synchronize them here as a record for myself.

Due to my limited writing skills, this post may have many grammatical errors. Please bear with me ( after all, it's just written for myself to read ).

Background #

This can be traced back to tweets (X posts) from around this time last year. It started with negative emotions and thoughts due to my studies, but the final straw was family issues…

Two significant aspects of life are education and family. The former became a mess starting in junior high school (as you can tell from a diary I wrote in high school), and the latter has been beyond my control since before I was born…

Cause #

This close friend took a break from school for a few years due to certain circumstances. Tonight, we suddenly touched on the topic of self-blame, which made me think of my own situation. So, I shared my thoughts or rather my current state, and took this opportunity to record them here. Hence, I wrote quite a lot…

Original Text #

Below is the slightly modified original record, mostly rambling, please excuse:

Close friend: …but sometimes when I’m in a bad mood because of other things, thinking about the past can easily trigger a breakdown.

Me: I use other ways to stop myself from thinking about the past…

For example, I’ve already lived through it, and there’s no chance to change anything; or thinking that I might live only a few more decades, and the days from junior high until now have flown by. Even if the past was unfortunate due to various reasons, it can’t be undone. Some things are beyond my control, so I restrain myself from dwelling on them and focus on living the life I can from now on, bit by bit.

Or sometimes, looking at things more broadly, I think about the people I’ll only see once in my life, like train conductors, ticket inspectors, or even random drivers waiting at a traffic light. Simply put, I consider myself an NPC, just passing through this life perhaps only once. So now, my mindset is calm. I don’t easily get angry anymore. In the grand scheme of life, many things are trivial and not worth making my life difficult over…

On the other hand, you never know what will come first, tomorrow or an accident. Maybe someone you envy today will be gone tomorrow, or it could be a friend, a familiar online acquaintance, a classmate, or even your parents. Perhaps you’ll be gone…

So, I forcefully adjusted my mindset to focus on the present. No matter the circumstances, at least I’m still alive now… and I’ve completely lost the East Asian trait of comparing myself to others. I used to compare myself to society’s average or even below average, always feeling like I was falling behind, living with constant self-torment. But now, I’ve changed. I instill in myself the idea that, among 8 billion people on Earth, everyone is placed in different environments. We have no choice before we’re born. If I’m going to live as a human, why not live well? No matter the environment, living happily even for a second is worth it. Otherwise, I might as well have decided to end it all consciously, but it hasn’t come to that for me yet. I wasn’t born into a war zone…

So far, I don’t feel that my education and family have completely wasted my life up to the high school stage. I also haven’t completely wasted everything due to anxiety and depression. This helped me overcome anxiety and depression before my second IELTS attempt. But as you know, my dad’s issues affected my family and my survival… I had a second breakdown… Fortunately, I managed to pull through with forced amnesia and numbness, holding on day by day and preparing for the worst…

Now, my mindset is… living day by day, every moment alive is my own. Because you never know what will come first, tomorrow or an accident. What’s the point of a highly successful life for me? Comparatively, I’d rather choose a happy and joyful life…

Me (additional thoughts 1): This process of forcefully adjusting my mindset started last year when my anxiety led to physical symptoms, making me feel worse than death…

Really, at that time, it was so bad that: if life is worse than death, then you have to let go of everything… nothing matters anymore…

Me (additional thoughts 2): Of course, for me, reaching this state doesn’t mean I’ve given up on myself or decided to lie flat. It’s about doing my best while I’m alive, to achieve my own vague choices (as in the last sentence).

Afterword #

The above reflects my mental journey over the past year or so. I don’t know how long this mindset will last, as people do change…

Additionally, based on some current observations (which might not be mentioned in the original text), I no longer believe in MBTI as much.