I started plodding out my miles with a heavy heart. One foot in front of the other, each obeying out of duty. It was a beautifully sunny and somewhat warm day, for February. Normally I would have been thrilled to be out running, soaking in the sunshine and becoming energized by the warm, fresh air. Not today. No amount of mood altering chemicals, produced by my body through exercise, could lift me out of the darkness I felt.

Running is usually mentally refreshing for me. It helps bring clarity to my mind, and solidifies my thought processes. Most of the time I’m left feeling better than when I started, but not this time. With every stride, I felt my mind spiraling down a deep dark hole of anger, self-doubt and despair. It felt uncontrollable, unstoppable. I ran harder, trying to bring my body to exhaustion. Maybe my tired body would force my mind to stop having a race of its own.

Depression has tailed me my whole life, but strangely enough, I never knew that I was depressed until my 30s. It seems weird to even say that, but I thought how I experienced life was normal. Since then I’ve used many things to overcome depression, medication, exercise, psychology and faith. In conjunction with each other I’ve been able to live and think differently, most of the time. But as I ran down the bicycle path, with my mind running towards a cliff, I knew that depression is sometimes well beyond my control and that life can easily trip me up. I have to take things one day at a time and when depression rears its ugly head, punch it in the face.