This one's easy: I am happy. I am so, so happy.

(I made this last July, when I first starting making the conscious effort to fight for my happiness)

You know what I was thinking? You know what I realized?

I haven't been depressed since last summer. Not even once. In the past, especially throughout college, it was so easy for me to be sad. I was sad. I could be temporarily happy -- happy on the surface and for a few layers underneath the surface, but I felt as though, within me, there was a deep and dark well that was always sitting, always waiting, always ready for me to fall into it and disappear. And I often did. For days at a time, for weeks, I would feel so, so sad and so out of control, and I was... miserable. For a lot of college -- even though parts of my life were happy, certain things made me smile and laugh -- I wasn't happy.

But now, it's the opposite. Whereas before, I could be temporarily happy but had the knowledge that, at my core, there was sadness, now, I can be temporarily sad, but I know that at my core, there is happiness. Some days, I do feel down. I feel like I am low on energy and walk around kind of quiet and bummed out, but, unlike before, I don't feel this deep, radiating sense of hopelessness. I don't feel engulfed and controlled by my sadness. I feel predominantly happy. Even when I am sad, if I think about my life and my friends and my family and my job and everything that I have going on, I am so, so happy.

And I am so grateful for this, friends. All my life, I've dealt with seasonal depression and chronic depression at some points, but I feel like, somehow, some miraculous way, I have escaped it. It really, really started in the fall of 2007 and peaked in the fall of 2010, before gradually disappearing in the summer of 2011. And good riddance, I say. Good riddance, dumb depression!

Sometimes, I feel like it's only a matter of time before it comes back. Sometimes, I fear that it's just lurking, biding its time and waiting for my one moment of weakness (because, really, that's all it needed in the past. Just one moment that would allow it to claw its way into my brain and settle it). But then, when I look at my life, when I look at my days and my nights and my world, I know that one moment of weakness is not enough anymore. Because within me, where that dark pit used to sit, there is a radiating joy. A light so bright that, when I stop to think about, I can't help but smile and squeal a very girly squeal of excitement.

Because I am living the life I have always dreamed of living. Living the life that, for so long, I was afraid to live. And I feel so blessed, so lucky, so wonderfully in love with the world everyday. Everyday is an adventure, and everyday I am excited to wake up and discover that I am still alive. 

And maybe my depression isn't waiting for me. Maybe, instead, while I was stuck in my sadness for so long, it was the world that was sitting in the corner, biding its time, and waiting for a day when I would get out of bed and say, "Today. Today is the day that I begin to live."

--

(In 20 minutes, I am getting picked up by a new friend, and we are going on a hike through the Blue Ridge Mountains. And then, we are going to a swimming hole. And then, we are making jalapeno-infused tequila for the margaritas that will be consumed at tonight's fiesta-themed party. And then, we are going to have that fiesta-themed party. And this is what my days resemble more often than not. And this is what I am talking about when I say that I am living the life I have always dreamed of living. Because I am)

(Change of plans. No more hike. But we are going and picking up about 20 recycled mattresses and filling a room in the fiesta house with mattresses for tonight's party. Along the walls, along the floor, along the ceiling [I wish] -- Mattress World!!!!)