Before we start today's show, I had a tough mental health day yesterday which ended up inspiring me to write the following column available in full to the public at patreon.com slash Ross Bolin podcast.

I woke up this morning completely defeated open my eyes and immediately felt darkness consume me. I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to move.

My thoughts were dominated by negativity and anxiety. A heavy blanket of depression was weighing me down. I legitimately considered canceling everything I had scheduled today and just succumbing to whatever the fuck that darkness felt like bringing on.

This has become more and more commonplace for me over the last year or so prior to entering my 30s. I had never experienced depression before.

I was familiar with it. I'd spoken to several people who struggle with it on this very podcast but had never experienced it myself.

And like so many of the best and worst things in life, depression is a force you can't fully comprehend until you experience it firsthand.

Nobody can explain to you fully how good sex feels. You have to fuck. Similarly, nobody can communicate the crushing nature of depression through the words alone. Everybody's experience with depression just like sex is different.

And I mean the complex nature of our most powerful human emotions better good in our own individual perception and handling of those emotions is what makes being human so special. Right.

So eventually I got myself out of bed because I had a lunch scheduled with somebody I was only recently introduced to and I didn't want to be rude.

I had tears streaming down my face while I was brushing my teeth but eventually those tears dried up. I felt that deep seated pain in my heart for like the first couple hours of the day but eventually it faded.

And now as I was writing this the work day is winding down. I've written a column. I had a two hour lunch with a badass new friend who was genuinely spurring growth in my life worked out my schedule for the rest of the week replied to roughly 100 emails played basketball for a half hour to get my blood pumping.

And I'm about to go for a run before the sun goes down which for the record. I fucking did.

Depression is like waking up every day down three games to one in the NBA finals and all you can do is find a way to win that next game when the day then when the next day then the next.

And obviously in life unlike in fucking basketball this shit does not stop there is no off season there is no Larry O'Brien championship trophy no cameras waiting in the bathroom to interview you after you hit the showers no fans in the rafters no millions of viewers on TV it is just you.

It's just me.

I won today.

Do I win every day no admittedly there are days when I don't fight hard enough there still days when I let the darkness consume me and I fail to overcome but those days are fewer and farther between as I open myself up to new things as I continue to gain perspective from new people and remind myself repeatedly that I will get stronger.

I know that if I want it bad enough and I work hard enough I will find peace again and that is enough to motivate me that is enough to keep me going today it worked yesterday it worked the darkness I wake up with some days that weight of defeat that almost it almost always feels like it will last forever when it said it's worst yet it never does.

And here I am.

Life is a beautiful gift filled with all manner of twists and turns you can't possibly even attempt to make sense of in real time.

But as those seconds turn into minutes into hours into days into weeks into months if you maintain the desire to survive and thrive and you desperately strive to keep a positive mindset and constantly search for wisdom each and every single one of those twists and turns will begin to make sense in time.

Every single moment of great pain and suffering in my life has eventually bred growth and joy if I have allowed it to every single heartbreak.

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