Yes, I was depressed and had given up on everything for about 4 straight years. For two of those years, I was thinking about suicide pretty much from morning till the evening. If you had told me back then I could ever lead a normal life again, not to speak of a life that others envy me for, I would have never believed you. If you've never been there, you really don't know how dark it can get inside of your head. But somehow I made it out. I still had all the potential in the world though, to be fair, friends, job opportunities, a healthy body. So there's that. You haven't told us about the extent of your friends injuries/ disablilities.
What I learned is that sometimes things need time, and then your worst times can turn into the greatest blessings later on. I will never forget the year where I finally came out of the fog and started living again. It was the most beatiful time of my life and I seriously cried tears of joy regularly just walking through the forests having found a will to live again. Might sound a little crazy, and maybe it was, but here I am, living, breathing and enjoying the world.
And I had to come to grips with the fact that like the misery that preceded my new happiness - the happiness also has to pass. Because everything in life is transient ... You hit a low point, the only way is up. But on the flipside, you hit a high point ... You know what I am saying. It was about coming to grips with some "harsh" realities of life and finding a way of accepting them. Not suppressing the thought of death and illness and all the bad in the world and the transientness of everything, but accepting it and finding the beauty in everything.
