real talk.

I've been living in Provo now for a few weeks, and everything is actually lovely. I like my cute little apartment that I get to call home. I love my roommates. I like my YSA ward. I've been on a few fun dates, I have a kid sitting next to me in my Eng 2040 class who has the prettiest blue eyes I have ever seen. (Like I can't talk to him without completely staring because they are beautiful). I've been able to go zip lining with my stake, swimming with my building, and Disney movie watching after ward prayer on Sundays. Life is really happy, which is something it hasn't been in quite a while for me.

But a little too often it hits me. It hits me that a year from now everything will be different. It hits me that my little sister isn't sleeping in the room next to me, it hits me that my brother is probably building something and I don't even know about it. It hits me that at any second my mom could call from the hospital, and it hits me that every time I go home could be the last time.

It hits me when I'm laughing at my roommate who just burned noodles, it hits me as I realize my family doesn't know the people I have grown so close to. It hits me when I am going through memory cards filled with footage of those who are gone, or soon will be. It hits me as I hang up my missionary pictures. All these things that bring me happiness are getting dampened by the thoughts of fear and sadness. Of the realization that reality can't be this kind to me. Life doesn't just go good for me, and in these short moments it scares me if I start to think that life really is working for me.

This summer I had been trying to fill my life with more faith. With more of the things that I knew would make me happy, and for a while it works. Then the sadness will creep in. The same sadness that had me crying in my closet instead of going out with my friends. Dear readers who also happen to be my dear friends, this sadness is real. It is all enveloping. It consumes everything, and sadly enough it is extremely hard to get rid of.

For me, I hadn't ever experiences this truly dark sadness until this summer. I had heard the word depression ever since my best friend in elementary school told me she suffered form it. I didn't understand, and I know I still don't fully, because I was always happy. My life could be in ruins, but somehow I remained happy. And to this day, I still do. But this summer I tasted just a little bit of this depression.

I became lonely. I started ditching out on activities, and parties consistently. Yeah I would've thought this would cause for loneliness too, but really when you are in these dark places just being around people seems almost unbearable. I didn't want people to see me unhappy. I didn't want them to keep asking what was wrong with me, because I didn't even know. But mostly, I didn't want anyone to notice, because in my mind no one would've cared anyways.

I wanted to fall. I wanted to sink right through the cracks and never get found. 

Lucky enough, I was found though. I was found by my best friend. I was found by the one who had never left me. The one that was next to me when I was sobbing in the closet. The one that kept me up when it would've been easier for me to fall down and lose it all. I was found by my Savior. He found me, and like Dieter F. Uchtdorf said in one of the most beautiful talks I have ever heard, 

"if you will only lift up your heart to the Savior of the world, He will find you. 
He will rescue you.

He will lift you up and place you on His shoulders. He will carry you home."

I lifted up my very broken heart to my dear Prince of Peace, Savior, and friend who was able to personally lift me up. While I still catch myself in little dark moments of fear, I am mostly basking in the sunlight. This summer was easily one of the worst in my whole life, but I was able to learn and grow from it and I do think that is truly what matters.

I know many people don't just get one summer of this, and my heart physically hurts for those who have to feel this darkness continually. But I am very grateful that no matter how dark our lives get, we have a glimmer of  light. Whether we can see that light now, or whether we have faith that one day that light will come, and we won't have to be encompassed with the darkness. 

So I will keep enjoying the moments of late night light movie watching, the brownies we make after church on Sundays, when I make it to school in time to find a parking spot, the intensity of the card games among friends, and I will keep being genuinely happy in these moments. I will keep being happy even when, "it" hits me. I will still keep moving forward because I know that one day things will get better. I know that the moments of fear are limited. And I keep going because I know that I have someone right by my side who wants me to succeed even more than I do. Because I have Jesus Christ, I truly have it all.

*this post is quite raw and real, and  this is something so terrifying to me to share because literally no one except my own family and a few of my very trusted confidants know about it. But my hope is that this gives some comfort to someone who might be having their own moments of crying in despair.