“I want to let you know where I was. I was at the bottom. My life was so small. Depression robbed my early life. It robbed me of many years. But I can’t sit around thinking about what I lost. I have today.
I did go to get help. I went to the Carson Center. I went week after week and the doctor there told me that I was saying, ‘I want it! I want it. I want to live a different life,’ but the truth is that medication was going to help me just a little bit and the rest I was going to have to fight for.
So I started with just a short walk. That’s what I promised my therapist and my psychiatrist. That I’d take a five minute walk around my house. I had to get off the couch and take that walk. Five minutes turned into ten minutes. Ten minutes turned into twenty. Twenty turned into a 5K walk. I joined a group called Couch to 5K and I did it. They gave me this medal.
And then there was more I needed to do. You know how when people say something really bad—use really bad words about you, how that feels? I had that happen to me, but also I was doing it to myself. I was telling myself all kinds of negative things about myself. I say now that I was Speaking Death to Myself.
I had to learn to Speak Life to myself. At first I couldn’t speak the good words to myself out loud, because I didn’t believe them. So I wrote them. I put a big sign in my hall that read, “You Are a Winner.” I’d see it every time I passed. After awhile, I started to believe it. And then I felt it inside—in here.
Now I Speak Life to Myself. And I Speak Life to the people I help. I got a job at the Carson Center. How ‘bout that? Couch to Employee!”
Words of LM by JAC Patrissi
