Help me and my partner restart our life

Hello, my name is Ivan, i'm 24 years old and i'm from Argentina. I'm currently living with my girlfriend and her parents at their house.

Before everything else, i want to clarify that English is not my native tongue and, though i have learned a lot on how to not talk and write like a caveman, it might still happen. So, here our story...

The last year was rough for everyone, and we weren't exempt of that. Disease attacked our planet, our people, our lives as we knew so far. Hardly i can say our live was difficult before the pandemy. We were living together with Antonella in a family borrowed apartment in La Plata, i had a decent job (boring and uninspiring, but good enough to survive), she was (and still is able to, luckily :D) studying for kindergarten teacher. Somewhat a common life, not huge struggles besides not having some kind of plan for the future, not knowing what we were doing with our limited time in this world (you know, the everyday challenge for everyone) and the occasional depression and anxiety that, until March 2020, I thought was common for everyone.

Then, Covid-19 appeared in scene.

We didn't know what we were dealing with. Thought that it was just some months alone, away from our family, working and studying from home, didn't seem so hard. But it takes a little shake of the so called "comfort zone" to bring to the surface the hidden chaos our minds seals.

It took one month and a half for depression to reach its peak. It wasn't unknown for me, but this time it was different. It slowly creeped all over me and my body stopped responding.

I wasn't able to work, i wasn't able to grief alone, i wasn't even able to get out of the bed. My mind was a concert of incoherent thoughts and incomprehensible angst. This, summed up to my boss cutting my salary (you know, capitalism and mental health don't go along) lead to my first panic attack. The first signal that something in my life had to change.

It's hard to tell exactly how it feels. It mixes the fear of not being able to deal with your life, the anxiety that calls a forceless body into action, the air that starts to scarce in your lungs and a desire for everything to end in that exact moment.

My mother and my girlfriend convinced me to start seeing a psychiatrist. This was the first step of a long road of recovery. A slow and strenuous work that revealed that depression was a part of my life for way longer than i realized.

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I'm still writing this part. If you read this far, thank you. I really appreciate it. Just sharing this story it's a giant step toward healing and wellbeing.

Soon i will upload some images to share with everyone so you will get to know Antonella, my loving girlfriend and Ofelia and Bartolo, my two adorable animal companions in this journey.

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I created this crowdfunding campaign to appeal to worldwide solidarity. We are trying to start again in our home city. The plan was to come back, get a job, start some kind of business and find somewhere to live.

As always, the plan never go as planned. Getting a job in this country was hard even before the pandemy and starting a business requires investing what little we had left (We did it tough, but it will take time). Also, we have a lot of medical bills, credit card debt, a loan to pay (we used the money to start @IlustreLimpieza, a local cleaning articles business) and a baggage of uncertainties. We need to make some money to pay our debts and keep the new business running.

As well, i'd love to continue my healing process with my therapist. Even with the medication, the support of my relatives and a fresh view of life, the desolation still roams not far off. Along with the psychiatrist, the psychologist is a fundamental stone of every recovery process.

Thankfully, we both have a really supporting family that wouldn't let us homeless. They're making a huge effort to help us, to give us everyday a food plate, a bed and a lot of love.

And now, ¿what?.

Well, it's time to reconstruct our lives, to care for our family and to seek new horizons. Personally, although we had hard times, hope arises. Because after depression, things might seem hard and intimidating, but are possible. And we, together, want to make them possible.

We want to really thank you for reading and, if you are going through a similar process or, at least, something of what you read seems familiar, ask for help, tell your relatives, open to the journey to a new life. Yes, it's scary and it's painful. Yes, it's gratifying and comforting. It's a road to self knowledge that seems unreal even while it's happening.

It's never too late to heal and start living.

With love, Ivan.