Daring To Take Up Space

by Daniell Koepke

When you feel depressed, it’s a sign that you’re in a situation that feels hopeless and you’re lacking in the resources necessary to successfully navigate your struggle and feel in control of your environment.

There’s nothing shameful about being sensitive. It doesn’t make you weak or inadequate or too much. It just means you experience the world a little more intensely. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

There’s strength in being soft. Strength in being raw and open and affected.

But anxiety doesn’t care about logic. It still feels debilitating and terrifying, and all of the reason in the world isn’t enough to ease the feeling that you’re going to die.

You don’t have to be alone just because you’re battling your own darkness.

Self-hatred doesn’t get unlearned through isolation. It’s unlearned through love. Through connection and care.

You don’t have to be the sickest or the saddest to warrant getting help. It’s okay to be functional and still need support.

You’re doing the best you can to cope and survive, and that’s all you can ask of yourself. It’s enough. On your good days. On your bad days. On the days you want to give up. You’re here, living and breathing and trying, and you’re enough.

The unfortunate, often painful, truth about life is that you can try your best at something and still not succeed.

I know that you feel alone and invisible. That you’re starving for connection and also terrified that you’ll be rejected or abandoned if you let people see all of who you are and where you are at.

I know that it feels like your entire life is hanging on certain decisions. That moving forward feels terrifying because you don’t want to make the wrong choice. That you can’t make the wrong choice. Because if you do—if you walk down this path and things don’t work out—your entire life will fall apart and you’ll never be able to go back and undo the damage.

You can always walk down a different path. You can always close doors that don’t serve you and open new ones that do. You never have to stay stuck. There are always options.

You’re human, and there is so much more to you than the darkness you feel.

you can’t destroy yourself for the sake of someone else. You have to make your well-being a priority.

It’s heavy, and the work is hard, but it’s not for nothing. You’ll get to where you want to be and you’ll become the person you want to become. Or maybe, you’ll blossom into a version of yourself you didn’t even know you wanted or didn’t know was possible.

Beating yourself up for not being further along does absolutely nothing to help get you closer to where you want to be. It makes you feel inadequate and ashamed, and it keeps you stuck. So stop fixating on how much farther you need to go and start acknowledging how incredible it is that you’ve gotten as far as you have. That despite how difficult this path has been, you haven’t given up.

When you find yourself drowning in self-hate, you have to remind yourself that you weren’t born feeling this way. That at some point in your journey, some person or experience sent you the message that there was something wrong with who you are, and you internalized those messages and took them on as your truth. But that hate isn’t yours to carry, and those judgments aren’t about you.

Maybe we heal when we accept that it’s okay to never go back; when we stop trying to use the broken pieces to rebuild the old picture and instead create a new one.

It’s easy to get caught up in the worst-case scenario, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves of the good that can come. Because that’s just as real and powerful.