Guest Post: Lucas Woodland

As a child, I relied very much on having my life planned out weekly, just to know where I was with things. Monday I would have football practice, Tuesday I would have Cub Scouts, Wednesday and Thursday I would spend up my dads and Friday night I would spend beefing up on Super Smash Bros. To me, the schedule was law. I wasn’t allowed to be ill, I wasn’t allowed to change my plans because I wanted to… This was my week, and that was that.

As I got older, I found myself still abiding by this very same system, but on a much larger scale. Weekly. Be it partying, playing shows, seeing girlfriends, or whatever. Still abiding very much to my own set diary of dates and times that I had to follow. Once again, it meant I got to do the things I loved most very often, and I didn’t let anybody down. It still remained perfect for me and the way I worked as a person.

Depression is something that hit me at quite a young age… Maybe 15 years of age? Not something I ever struggled too much living with, but something that really altered a lot of the steps and decisions I made. The older I got, the more depression struck me and the harder it felt for me to go on. I’m not proud to say it, but there have been points of my life where I’ve really wondered if I were to make it to tomorrow… If I even wanted to make it to football or band practice the next day.

I started looking at my schedule a little differently… I started commending myself on the fact that I’d made it to Tuesday, not what I was particularly doing on Tuesday… Just like my school attendance was necessary, I HAD to make it to tomorrow. I WAS going to make it through January… February… March… And I did. (I am well aware of how obscure this may all seem, but these are just the inner workings of my brain and my basic survival instincts in later cases. I guess this is just a big metaphor).

When asked to write a piece for Heads Above The Waves on the topic of “Where you are now isn’t where you’re always going to be”, I jumped at the chance. HATW has been a very important part of my life over the past few months. When I first experienced my depression I was a lot less clued up on my condition. Why was nobody else miserable? What have I done to deserve this? I felt like I should’ve been the same as everybody else, but emotionally just wasn’t. In the 21st century, the internet is a wonderful tool in the hands of the right people, and thanks to Heads, young people like myself experiencing horrible feelings they don’t understand get to have a shoulder to cry on and somebody to understand them. So needless to say, being offered the chance to maybe help even one person relate, was a great opportunity for me.

Every day is a beautiful, beautiful accomplishment when you have depression. I guess the point of this post is to help remind you that even the smallest things are huge accomplishments! Every night you cry yourself to sleep is a success because you fought the odds and you made it. As I write this, I’m somewhere in my life I don’t always want to be, I’m struggling but I’m doing things the way I always have. I know that tomorrow is another goal for me to complete, and another goal I am going to complete. If you take anything from my long-winded, (and in typical fashion) off-topic post today, please know that you have a million more hurdles to jump in life, starting tomorrow, and you will jump them… As will I.

Keep living and making those around you proud. You reading this is a blessing in itself.

– Lucas Joseph Woodland xo

(666 word count too \m/)