The cold steel of the knife touched my wrist. I took a deep breath and said “This is it.” I was ready to end it. I tried my hardest to cut up my forearm. I tried once. It didn’t leave a mark. I tried twice. I couldn’t. I dropped the knife.

Tears of joy ran down my face as I realized the most important thing ever in my life. I put the knife away, not wanting to ever see it again. I went to sleep and woke up being the happiest I had been in nine months. I wasn’t going to let depression affect me ever again. It was time to change it.

Allow me to present a little background on myself. I graduated high school with high honors and had many achievements in athletics and clubs. I joined the UGA football team as a preferred walk on, essentially an offer which means that the athlete will get recruited but receive no scholarship. So in July of 2013, I enrolled in the University of Georgia and began football workouts. I met some great friends that summer and won’t ever forget it.

I was depressed from about August until the night of May 2nd of freshman year of college.

There was no reason behind it all. Plain and simple. People say “There had to be something behind it.” There wasn’t. I had everything. I have the best family in the world, great friends and teammates, and I was living a great life in college.

I would randomly feel depressed, almost as if I hated life and didn’t want to exist anymore. I didn’t want help from anyone.

It made a massive negative impact on my life. I had a smile on every day during my battle with depression because I didn’t want to talk about it. As soon as I frowned or appeared out of it, someone would ask me what was wrong. Like I said, I had nothing to be depressed about. It was just there, in my head, taking control of me.

I wanted to take my own life because I believed it was the only way out of this misery.

I hadn’t seen an end in sight. With recurring episodes of depression, I felt as if they were never going to end. It would just hit me every two weeks or so and I would just feel like I hate myself. So I finally tried to and I couldn’t. It was an awesome feeling. But as I realized I couldn’t take my own life, I had to learn something from this 9 month struggle.

Since my conquering of depression, my life has been on an upward spiral. Everything is going great for me.

I now see the positive side of every situation and outcome. It’s truly amazing how one can feel if they just find the positives through everything.

I’m in the process of building my own app that should be released in the next few months. I was inspired by my depression to create this so that way anyone could find someone to talk to relating to any interest.

The realization that I could actually own my depression changed my life in the most amazing way possible. I could control my emotions. I controlled my own happiness. I woke up every day ready to see what beautiful thing life would throw at me.

The important thing I’ve learned about suicide and depression is that people do care and want to help, even if you don’t want to talk about it.

Life is the most beautiful thing ever. Not everyone gets to live a full life and it just comes down to living life to the fullest every day. Love everyone, that one person who seems the happiest on earth may be struggling the most on the inside.