“It gets better” is a phrase I have heard alot recently and its starting to drive me crazy. Ive been through this part of depression before, I know it gets better, I am still fighting each and everyday to get out of bed and brush my teeth and try and be a functioning human. I don’t want to hear, “It gets better” I want to be told that its okay to lay in bed for a little and if all I did today was drink soup in my bed, then atleast I ate. It is that time of year when people start to feel down because of the weather, but for me, its that in combination of loads of unhealed trauma from my childhood coming to the surface.

I reunited with my cousins after ten years and they are both younger than me. To hear what they have dealt with and suffered with alone broke my heart, and it hit way harder than I expected it too. It reminded me of what I felt living at home, the way I knew my moms footsteps and could hear the way that she was stumbling up the stairs. It reminded me of hearing my parents yelling about me through the vent every night and hearing how they were upset with me for my grades or sports or whatever they felt like talking about that night. I can’t help my cousin, as he lives too far away I can just text and call and check in and remind him that hes worthy and smart and that I love him. I couldn’t help younger me either, she didn’t know better, she was surviving in any way she could. I got out, but he hasn’t, now that, that burns in my chest. I have more control now and don’t have to put my mom to bed, or listen to my dad scream, but he doesn’t. Sure, our situations are different, his parents are divorced and the dynamic just isn’t healthy, but he still has the same feelings I did, and I hate that. I told myself the night we reconnected that I would keep trying, keep going, keep living for them. I will hold myself to that promise because I will never ever let them handle this alone again. I didn’t have anyone growing up, but that does not meet I can’t be a support to them now. So yeah, “It gets better”, but it takes strength, and courage, and love and heartache to get to that point, and sometimes we just need to know that we are doing okay and someones proud.