I got lost for a while

Tied up in the label of bipolar, consumed by the clouds of depression, I lost track of my path.

Each step taken in uncertainty and fear, wondering ‘is this the step that's going to push me over the edge?'.

It took losing my sister to make me realise, how much I had lost myself.

My heart has shattered a million times. Grief became my second nature, and I allowed myself to be enveloped by it. I felt that if I lived in this grief, a new grief would not come, but the universe does not work that way.

She took my heart the day she left. She took any rhyme or reason, or small understanding I had of life the day that she died.  With her passing she taught me that lightning can strike the same heart twice, tragedy does not prevent tragedy. You cannot put a stop on your life, and expect to be protected from pain.

You have to live life, really live it, feel everything no matter how painful. You cannot hide from life.

When you open yourself up to the universe for the first time in years, you feel like crying. Not because you are sad, but because it feels like home, only it's like no home you have ever known before. Colours become brighter, love feels deeper, and the shattering pain of heartache becomes bearable.

I can hardly remember a time when I haven’t known depression, even in my lightest days I used to feel it creeping behind me.  My feet always unsteady on the ground, never sure of where I was meant to be, the one thing I felt I knew to be true was that I didn’t belong here.

I search every inch of my body for the darkness, I run through every corner of my mind in search of its marks, and I cannot find them. Even though I can still see the scars from the binds of my labels, they are fading. Even though I can still remember the suffocating pain of my grief, I can breathe.

I feel like I’ve awoken from a deep sleep, the clouds have cleared and all I can see is light. I know there is still a long way to go, but for the first time in a long time I don't feel lost.