I Am Still Here: Coming Through Depression, Anxiety, and the Dark

Content note: this chapter mentions depression and anxiety, insomnia, prolonged stress, loss of function, and my early attempt to stop psychiatric medication abruptly without enough professional support. It is a personal account, not medical, mental-health, or crisis advice. If you are in immediate danger, or may hurt yourself or someone else, do not stay alone. Contact someone you trust, local emergency or hospital services, and qualified professional support.

Narrative Boundary

I place this chapter after My Story because the previous chapter records what happened, while this one records how those events entered my body, emotions, and relationships. It remains my perspective, not a complete judgment of anyone involved. Details about my family, partner, child, and friends are limited to what is needed to understand my experience.

I am not a clinician, and I do not diagnose myself or anyone reading this from a memory. This chapter does not provide medication names, doses, taper schedules, replacement treatments, or crisis assessments. Starting, adjusting, reducing, or stopping medication should be evaluated with the prescribing doctor or another qualified professional. A personal account can help us begin a conversation; it cannot replace professional judgment.

The Dark Fog Was Not Solved by “Thinking Positive”

Before the company failed, I believed every problem could be solved with longer hours. If a project broke, I revised it again. If cash flow broke, I found another path. If the team was about to dissolve, I told another story about the future. I treated persistence as a moral quality and stopping as betrayal.

In 2022, sales fell, and the problems in our architecture, product, and cash flow surfaced together. Conflict over management made the office feel like a room that kept tightening. In June, my stomach began to fail, followed by erosive gastritis, insomnia, blurred vision, loss of appetite, and pain that moved through my body. My body kept sending signals; I translated them into one sentence: I was simply not strong enough.

One night I told my partner, “I may not make it.” I began speaking chaotically and trying to arrange what should happen after me. She cried, and our child woke up. There was no cinematic turn that night. There was only a family woken by fear, waiting for me to become quiet again.

For the next several months I queued at hospitals, had scans and blood tests, waited for results, and asked doctors to interpret them. Doctors repeatedly said they had not found a severe illness that explained everything I felt, but my body did not believe them. I searched symptoms online, told myself I was fine, and kept looking for the answer that had not yet been found. Anxiety enlarged every signal and translated every “nothing serious found” into “they have not found it yet.”

Depression drained colour from ordinary life. It was not crying every day. It was needing to cross a thick layer of air before eating, leaving the house, or replying to a message. I stopped wanting to talk or meet people. I stopped opening GitHub. Even the work I knew best began to look like someone else’s life. I knew what I should do, but I could not find the strength to turn “should” into movement.

I Mistook Stopping Medication for Taking Back Control

Early in that period, I experienced depression and anxiety, and I once forced myself to stop psychiatric medication abruptly without enough professional support. I thought stopping was a way to take back dignity and control: if I could endure it through willpower, I could prove that I had not been defeated and did not need help.

Looking back, it was not courage. It was a dangerous decision made by someone whose judgment had already been narrowed by fear and shame. Stopping did not remove the problem from my life. It removed a form of support before I had built another one. My body and emotions became harder to read, and I confused “I am no longer taking it” with “the cause has been solved.”

I do not present this as a model for stopping medication, and I do not present medication as the answer for everyone. It shows something more specific: in darkness, it is easy to turn a complex medical decision into a moral test. If I can endure more, I must be stronger. If I need treatment, I must be defective. That false choice can keep hurting people.

If you are considering starting, changing, reducing, or stopping psychiatric medication, bring your fears, questions, and side effects to the prescribing doctor or another qualified professional. Do not derive your plan from my story, and do not stop abruptly without support. I do not include a drug name, dose, or schedule because those details should not be copied from a personal narrative.

There Was No Morning When I Simply “Figured It Out”

In 2023, I transferred my last restaurant and returned to my hometown with my three-year-old son. Leaving the city where I had spent more than a decade should have been a new beginning. At the time, it was mostly an escape from days I could no longer carry.

At home, I became quiet. My mother sent a daily WeChat reminder telling me to eat. Without those messages, I might not have eaten regularly at all. Almost thirty years old and still waiting for my mother to remind me to eat: I felt ashamed, but I also could no longer pretend I was merely tired. I needed help.

I rebuilt my desktop and played games through the night. At first, the game was a room I could hide inside. Later, even that room became dull. Day and night lost their boundaries. I earned nothing, argued with my partner about the future, and fell out with a close friend over money. I left group chats, shut down GitHub, blocked contacts, and slowly deleted myself from the world I had known.

On my son’s birthday, my partner asked whether we should go out for hotpot. I hesitated and said we could buy a small cake and stay home. We went to Haidilao after all, but ordered very little. When the staff sang a birthday song about saying goodbye to every trouble, I suddenly could not hold myself together. Troubles do not leave that easily. The hurt my family carried because of my choices did not disappear just because I was suffering too.

It was not a polished awakening. It was a mirror. I saw that I had reduced “being alive” to not disappointing anyone, while failing to care for myself or face the effects my choices had on other people.

I Did Not Come Through Alone

I did not leave the dark through one decision. The first change was to stop treating help as a verdict on my character. I began to admit that some problems required medical assessment, some nights required family nearby, some promises had to pause, and some relationships needed an apology instead of another explanation.

Asking for help did not turn someone into my therapist or rescuer. I learned to say specific things: “Please remind me to eat.” “Please come with me to the hospital.” “I am not doing well today and may reply slowly.” “I cannot promise this now; I will give you a clear time after my review.” Specific requests told people how to come closer while allowing me to keep a say in what help looked like.

The companion chapter Recovery: Catch Yourself Before You Push Forward describes a fuller framework: confirm safety, reduce the load, then rebuild through brief, reversible tasks. For me, the key was not filling each day with a perfect plan. It was stopping further damage: eat and sleep first, pause high-risk decisions, keep necessary contact, and shrink “repair my life today” into “complete one action that will not harm tomorrow.”

I also learned to separate responsibility. The company failure was a fact. The losses and the impact on colleagues were responsibilities. “My whole life is ruined” was a sentence produced by shame. My physical collapse was real and deserved professional assessment. “I only need to endure a little longer” was an old fantasy. Separating facts, interpretations, and responsibility gave life boundaries I could work with again.

What “Coming Through” Means to Me Now

I no longer define coming through as never feeling depressed or anxious again. I also do not turn one visit, one title, or one new project into a victory over the past. Those things only show that I have enough strength to sit at the table again and let reality answer a question.

For me, coming through means quieter abilities:

• noticing changes in sleep, appetite, pain, and attention earlier;
• refusing to use abrupt medication cessation as proof of independence;
• telling one trustworthy person before silence becomes a crisis;
• accepting professional support while stating clearly what family and friends can and cannot do;
• carrying responsibility without using it to punish myself;
• returning to safety or reduced load when my state worsens instead of filling the schedule again;
• shrinking work into a real deliverable that leaves room for tomorrow.

None of this is spectacular. It gives me choices again. The dark did not reveal a nobler personality. It exposed how I had confused endurance with health, productivity with worth, and hiding with strength. Recovery has been the slower work of separating those things and learning how to stay with myself.

To the Person Still in the Dark

If you recognise yourself here, you do not need to prove that your pain is serious enough before asking for help. You can say, “I cannot function normally,” “I am frightened by my thoughts,” or “I should not be alone right now.” If you cannot explain more, send those words to someone trustworthy and ask them to help you contact appropriate professional support.

Please do not copy my early decision to stop medication abruptly, and do not use my experience to decide your treatment. Medication, therapy, medical care, and crisis support need qualified professionals who can consider your situation. If you have a specific plan to hurt yourself or someone else, move away from objects that could cause harm, do not stay alone, and contact someone nearby, local emergency services, or a crisis service now.

The next action can be very small: drink water, eat, open a window, send one message, schedule an assessment, or reduce today’s necessary tasks to one. Small does not mean unimportant. Small means it has a chance to happen.

Sources and Boundaries

• Recovery: Catch Yourself Before You Push Forward: a practical framework for safety, reduced load, specific help, and a gradual return to work.
• Narrative and Evidence: Do Not Turn Experience into Fate: separate facts, interpretations, responsibility, and what remains unknown.
• This chapter does not provide diagnosis, medication plans, tapering instructions, or local crisis-line numbers. Contact qualified professionals and emergency services available where you live.

Closing: I Am Still Here

I used to think coming through the dark meant returning to the person who could solve everything. I no longer want to return there. I can carry the failures, debts, bodily memories, and evidence of being helped, and keep living.

I did not come through in one moment. I learned, across ordinary days, not to hand myself over to the dark alone: ask for help when needed, take responsibility for what I can carry, state clearly what I cannot, and leave tomorrow for tomorrow when today allows only one step.

My name is Han Xiankai. I have experienced depression, anxiety, insomnia, shame, and helplessness. I have also made a decision that exposed me to more risk than I understood. I am not a more perfect person because of this. I am still learning to care for myself, repair relationships, work honestly, and return the fact of being alive to my own hands.

I am still here. This is not a triumph. It is continuation.