I have always felt like I am a loner, ever since I was a child.
I didn't have a traditional up-bringing.
I didn't have a father around or an older/younger brother to beat the shit out of.
I have one older sister and we were both raised by a single mother.
Being as that I was the only boy in the house, I spent a majority of my time at home by myself.
I used to sit in my room and dream about the life that I wanted to live, whether it was to play in the NHL, or become an actor in Hollywood and play in movies.
The only time I got any sense of normalcy was when I was at the ice rink or going to my childhood best friends house almost every weekend to escape my own home - these were the only times I could ever get to do boy things.
I have suffered from traumas that I have not shared with a single soul because there are some things are better left unsaid, but I am aware of them and their effect they played on my subconscious growing up.
I oftentimes found myself thinking about death and believing that I was not going to make it to see my older years as a full-grown man.
I can't explain it, I just felt like I always wanted something to end it early for me and I believed that I was going to be one that left this planet at a young age.
When I reflect on my childhood, not having a traditional household or seeing much of my father, I realize just how important it is for a young boy to have a man that they could look up to for guidance because I never had one...
I would just like to make it clear that my father has always made it a point to be a part of my life, I just rarely got to see him growing up having two separated parents.
I love my dad and he still makes an effort to this day to message me every single day, but I never had the true connection a son should have with their father.
I genuinely feel like I don't even know my dad even though I have known him my entire life.
I had no man to look up to growing up and I spent a majority of my time alone inside my own head, thinking about wanting to be extremely successful but not making it to see myself as an old man.
I realize this is large-in-part why I am the way that I am today.
As I have gotten older, I still spend a majority of my time alone and this is part of the reason why I gravitate to animals so heavily.
Working with horses or getting to spend time with my dogs are the only times I am able to truly find peace in my older years.
Now that I am older, I realize that I spent a majority of my life depressed because I am now able to think with a clear mind and conscience about how I want my life to look.
My journey to become the man that I am today and continue to become everyday was no accident.
Everything I have done for the last eleven years of my life has been intentional towards something.
Whether it was getting into the gym to build my body to become a bodybuilder, to uprooting my entire life and moving across the country in pursuit of a childhood dream, to uprooting my entire life again and moving back to the East Coast to pursue a life I find worth living - everything has happened because I made it happen.
Now that I am able to think clearly about what I want, coupled with the self-discipline I have learned along the way, I realize that depression is a lack of fulfillment of potential.
Becoming extremely disciplined in everything that I do allows me to focus on the things that I truly want and value in life.
Realizing that the process sucks most of the time and embracing that suck is what makes life worth living because I know the reward that lies on the other side will be worth it.
Waking up everyday and realizing that I have a job to do and that my purpose is to help as many people and help as many animals that I possibly can in my lifetime.
Everything that I do now is to become the strongest possible version of myself so that the people around me can benefit the most.
In my early years in the gym, I strictly just wanted to be a bodybuilder and compete on stage. Now when I go into a gym, I go in with the intent of building myself mentally and physically as strong as possible so that I can become a true protector and set an example for my future family.
I have come to the realization over the last five years that I have an enormous amount of potential and I would be doing a disservice to God, my future family, and myself by not working every single day to fulfill it.
I always knew I had potential, I just never knew what potential truly meant because my mind was not in the place that it is in now.
I realize that exercising my potential is the only way I have been able to successfully fight off depression.
Having extreme self-discipline, not giving in to short-term desires, and only focusing on how I want my life to look is how I have been able to combat depression.
Every once in awhile, my childhood morbid thoughts do creep in but truth-be-told, I have thought about death in great detail and I have come to the conclusion that when my time comes, it will come.
I am not scared of death and I have learned to accept that it is just a part of life - it is the one debt that we all have to pay as being living beings on planet Earth.
I know whatever God has planned for me is in His hands and the only thing that I can do is continue to work to fulfill my potential so that when my time comes, I leave nothing behind.
I do get anxious at times because where I currently am is not where I want to be, but I know that where I am currently is only temporary.
I have full belief in myself to make the things that I want in my life happen and there is only one direction in which life moves and that is forward.