Two days ago I drove down MLK Junior Boulevard for the first time in five months.

The last time had been in early August of last year, my car loaded with the contents of my apartment and my hands shaking on the steering wheel. It was the first day of the Fall 2019 semester. My friends were all headed to class, and I was going in the opposite direction.

I was going to Colorado.

The past three years of college had been nothing short of horrific. Filled with lonely nights, undiagnosed depression, and suffocating anxiety. I had spent countless hours curled up inside my closet, muffling heartsick sobs into dirty t-shirts. It was the place my roommates were least likely to hear the truth of my misery.

Then, three weeks before the Fall 2019 semester began, I decided I needed a break. I decided to take a gap semester working at a YMCA on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park.

It was easily the best decision I have ever made.

I am not sure whether it was the unquestioning love of my new friends or the beauty of the world around me, but those four months in Colorado healed the cracks in my hesitant heart. With every smile I shared with a friend or tree I wrapped my arms around, I slowly allowed myself to feel joy again.

I will forever be in awe of the power of that experience.

But that was then.

Now I am back at Chapel Hill.

Driving down MLK Junior Boulevard towards my apartment for the first time in five months felt like something out of a dramatic fantasy novel. I was the hero knowingly walking towards the boss battle, intentionally moving towards certain pain.

Going back to school was going to be a fight, but, this time, it was a fight I believed I had the strength to take on.

For the first time in five months, I pulled into the tight parking lot, unlocked the door to my apartment, and walked up the stairs to my bedroom. Neither of my roommates were home. I laid down on the bare mattress on the floor and stared up at the ceiling.

I felt the ghost of my past self lying on the mattress next to me. Her depression was like a heavy grey fog filling my lungs. How many times had she laid on this same bed and started at this same ceiling?

I laid on the bare mattress and allowed myself to mourn. To mourn for years of lost happiness. To allow the grey fog of the past to encompass my newly-minted soul.

Then I stood up, exhaling the cloud of dense fog. It reluctantly slid down my body to form a lethargic puddle around my feet.

I’m not sure what happened to the fog after that. I went back out to my car to carry in my suitcase, and when I returned, it had dissipated.

I suspect that it lives in my floorboards, watching and waiting for my heart to crack enough to let it back in. After all, depression is something you can never truly cure. Only something you can learn to live in an uncertain balance with.

Thankfully, I’m no longer afraid of moving forward.