one of the scariest and most existentially crushing thing in this life is the thought of 'What could have been?'
It's not just "Oh, what would have happened if I had stayed longer in a situation that ended up being bad?" or "How narrowly did I miss death?" What's even scarier than that is sitting back and reflecting on what YOU could have become. Getting to the end of your life and feeling it to have been inadequate.
You can rebound from failure. You can try something different. You can't rebound from being at the last stage of your life and realizing how many opportunities you had but didn't pursue.
Having all of the opportunity in the world and squandering it is absolutely devastating. Or having your whole life ahead of you and not knowing what you want to be for fear of the path not taken being the most rewarding.
Your choices of paths in life are not always clear. Sometimes it is as clear as, "I could do this, but that'll probably be bad, so I might as well not do it," but life is also full of open-ended questions, and in those cases the paths are often foggy. You can't predict the future. You can't tell if the lottery ticket you walked by is a winning ticket. You can't tell if the event you went to would have someone in it who you'd meet and would change your life.
What you do know, though, is that staying home and not going anywhere or doing anything will certainly not lead to an interaction that changes your life.
If you can't get up, or can't seem to feel like doing anything, it's not your fault. It's not your fault for not being able to get up some days. For everyone, some days are challenging. For some, though, every day is challenging. In those instances, you have to ask for help. You can't sit out your whole life, but you shouldn't let that dread overwhelm you. If you make steps in the right direction by asking a doctor for help, or talking to trusted friends, or family, you will end up participating in life.
Sometimes it's a long way to go, but it's not a long way of pain and suffering. The path to getting better is not a check mark that gets filled off instantaneously after suffering for a long time through "getting better". It's a long way to get better, but on that long way you are still getting better. It seems intimidating, but it's a lot less intimidating once you realize that "getting better" means your days become easier as your depression gradually subsides. Basically, the path to "getting better" gets easier as it goes on. The hardest part is just starting it.
