"But sometimes hope isn't enough. Sometimes, the damage done by hate and by haters is simply too great. Sometimes the future seems too remote. And those are the times our hearts break."

- Dan Savage, founder of the "It Gets Better" project

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I've honestly always despised the phrase, "Haters gonna hate."

I suppose it's really such a trivial thing to get set off by, but it still never ceases to frustrate me. I just hate that it makes it sound like hate is normal.  Because while hate is common, hate really shouldn't be stamped as normal. Hate, in any form, should never be accepted as a social norm. It makes it sound like hate should be received with apathy and nonchalance.  But hate should never be ignored. Hate should always incite change, it should always inspire a revolution towards kindness. Hate should never be shrugged upon. Hate is an enemy, and it should always be something that we continually seek to overcome. Hate should never be looked upon with indifference. Hate needs to be unacceptable.

I am blessed to feel amazing every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to sleep. I am blessed to be surrounded by people that care about me and help me carry my sword and shield.  But behind that, I am a girl that has freshly recovered from depression. Over the past few months, I have built many pages in this Xanga in regards to that. In my shadow, there is a past where I felt alone, and empty, and worthless. There was a past where I did not expect to allow myself to live long enough to see age twenty-two. This nightmare was the reality that I lived with, everyday for months, as recently as sixteen weeks ago.

So everyday, I still step forward with caution. Everything I have now is amazing. I am truly grateful for the place I am now. But that doesn't change that the most frequent obstacle for people recovering from depression is relapse. I have been depression-free for three months now. And I am always afraid of relapsing.

Whenever I feel empty or whenever I feel unmotivated, it sets off every single alarm in my being. The second I notice it, my heart drops, and I mutter a, "Dear god, no." I have been greatly fortunate in that it has always been transient, and that I have always been overreacting. My situation is the same as sneezing and your first reflex is to conclude that you have typhoid fever. But turns out, sometimes college students really do just get unmotivated just because studying is boring.  Thank god. But it doesn't stop the worry, and it doesn't stop the prayers. "Please, I want to stay okay. I don't want to go back to that place." It doesn't stop the fear. Everytime I want to grow relaxed in my efforts, when I feel like being alone and antisocial like in the old times, I remember, "I have to keep working on myself if I want to stay better. I can never stop working. I can never give in. I can't let myself go back there."

Similarly, my paranoia also makes my heart drop deep into my stomach whenever I hear anyone joke about or mention depression or suicide. If it has even just the slightest undertone of truth behind it, I cannot let it go. A month ago, I was walking with a then-acquaintance, and I told him playfully, "Im'ma kill you!" He replied, half-jokingly, "That sounds pretty welcome right now, actually." But I took that shit seriously, and I promptly decided to devote the rest of that entire weekend towards making sure that he was okay, and I continue to try to be there for him when he is feeling low. I was talking with another friend more recently, and he casually said, "I haven't really been happy in years," and since then, I've been texting him several times a day just to let him know that he's not alone.

Because I've been there. I've been in that place. I remember being there, and I remember how much I wanted out, as helpless as I felt. As the hate against me accumulated, I felt like the only choices I had were to get better, or to leave this world. And I felt like I was too weak to do the former. And that left...

I do not wish those choices on anyone else. I never want suicide to be an option for anyone. I know what it is like. I know what it is like to just lie there, preparing to die, because there is simply no other choice. There was no other way to get myself away from this pain and loneliness. To get away from this hate. I would imagine the celebration that would happen the day that I left, and how so many people would be happier if I wasn't around anymore. How all the people that hated me were right all along, they were so right. And it was torture. I do not wish that amount of suffering on anyone.

There is an enormous sadness in my heart whenever I learn about a young person taking their own life. I may not have ever seen their face before, I may have not ever heard their name before, but it still always affects me.  I know the stages that prelude a decision like that. There is no greater torture than being at a place where ending your life becomes the only choice left. It is the greatest amount of loneliness imagineable.

In spite of everything that I know was happening, I still do not know how he made that decision.  I do not know how he chose to ignore my wounds and ignore my confessions, and chose to let me wash in hate.  I understand the defeat, and I even understand the giving up. But I do not understand the choice of ignorance.  He saw the pain, but he chose ignorance. And I saw it as proof that I was not worth saving. And I do not understand that.  If I were him, I would not have been able to sleep at night. I do not blame him for what I went through. I saw his frustration, and I saw him crumbling under the weight of my baggage. I know why it happened, but I just don't understand how he could make that decision and still manage to sleep at night.

Maybe it is because I have been there before. I have stood in front of the mirror, hating myself to the very core, but only truly wanting to be saved. All you really want is to be saved, whether that be by getting better, or by death. All you want is to be saved.

So it has become impossible for me to witness that kind of hate and just accept it, because I know what that kind of loneliness is like.  And possibly just as damaging, I know what it is like to have your pain be ignored.  So I cannot sleep easily if I let a comment like that go ignored, because I know how much that hurts.  I cannot sleep easily knowing that I am allowing hate to run rampant.  I cannot sleep easily knowing that my choice could be the difference between saving a life and losing a life.

I was once ashamed and secretive of my history with depression.  But I cannot squander the toil that I have endured, and the lessons that I have learned.  The hope that my pain and my experience can inform someone, inspire someone, help someone... that is far more important than my inhibitions. 

A critical lesson that I have realized is that hate cannot be ignored.  Hate is not a taste that you can allow yourself to acquire, hate is not something that you can allow yourself to become numb to.  Hate must always be our foe.  We must identify it as the chain that we hope to break free from -- "We shall overcome."  So never turn a blind eye to hate.  Acknowledge it, and fight it.  It will be difficult.  Hate is everywhere, and it is powerful.

But life is always worth more than that.

Life is always worth fighting for.