To understand how depression affected me, you need to know who I was before I was diagnosed.

During high school, I was the go-getter. I was very involved in choir, musicals and my studies. I had no problem getting good grades with minimal effort. I wasn’t popular and sometimes I felt like I didn’t fit in, but I had my friends to hang out with.

I was always told that I would thrive in college, that it would be the perfect place for me. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I struggled, not with my courses, but with me classmates. A series of issues with various roommates left me feeling lonely and forgotten. The feelings that I didn’t fit in and wasn’t wanted became extremely prevalent.

My sophomore year, I was introduced to a guy by a group of friends from home. My first relationship, albeit a long-distance one, began. He was the one I could talk to when things weren’t going well. I fell in love, but like first loves, it wasn’t meant to be.

After another string of roommate failures, I had gotten special permission to live off-campus my junior year. A work opportunity kept me at college the summer before, 6 hours away from my boyfriend. The distance took its toll and 10 months after we started dating, we called it quits.

I was devastated. It had been my first real relationship, the first guy I had fallen in love with, and the guy who had taken my virginity. For weeks, my health deteriorated; loss of appetite, nausea, loss of motivation, tiredness, I wasn’t attending my classes and I could barely get out of bed. At first, I thought I was pregnant, but a pregnancy test quickly negated that. Finally I went to the health clinic on campus. Finding nothing physically wrong with me, I was diagnosed with depression and was put on my first antidepressant.

And so began my battle; a fight that has lasted over three years, thus far.

I would like for you to follow along my journey, as I recount it.  I feel as though sharing my thoughts and feelings through major moments of my illness would help those unfamiliar with depression gain an understanding, albeit small, of what it’s like to live with depression.