After I threw my phone against the wall, watching it shatter into useless pieces, I threw myself onto the kitchen floor, hoping I would break apart, too.

"How could I care about someone capable of being so awful? That must mean that I am awful! I will never be happy—I don't deserve to be happy."

If I had actually had the guts to kill myself, I probably would've, but I didn't have a gun or pills, and the idea of opening a vein sounded very, very messy. There was a moment when I really did try to will my heart to stop, but it kept beating.

Stupid, worthless heart.

Like a lot of people, this is how my late teens and early 20s seemed to go, thanks to trying to balance life's unavoidable broken hearts, the Northwest's infamous winters, and depression. I'm sure it's not an unfamiliar story for many of you, either.

But today, years later, I can no longer identify with those overwhelmingly harmful feelings that were once so, so real. Today, I'm planning a late-fall wedding to the greatest man in the universe (no offense to you other dudes). I have a popular food blog that's received positive attention from the Wall Street Journal and Martha Stewart Living Radio. My family is healthy, and my friends are happy and happy for me, and I think about how awesome life is on a daily basis. Literally. I think life is great at least once a day.

Don't barf! I will stop with all the "It's so great to be me!" bullshit. I'm going to get to the point.

I know this isn't a permanent feeling. Realistically, my fiancé could wake up tomorrow, call off the wedding, and move out of our apartment. People in my life will get sick; people I love will die. I will (and do) have bad days, and the shitty thing about depression, which I've been attempting to stave off since I was a teenager, is that it never completely goes away—it requires a constant defensive strategy.

But as I allow myself to finally embrace all the positive things that surround me, I do so with some trepidation. With over a decade of feeling sad on a regular basis, I grew to find my misery comforting. Sure, it was horrible, but it was familiar.

My misery and I had settled into a routine, and a huge part of that routine involved a collection of songs that had become an integral part of my world. Listening to these songs would remind me that I was not the only person in the world who has ever felt like they were fighting a futile battle. These songs were my everything, and I was convinced they always would be.

But things change.

Listening to these same songs today, while I look at wedding dresses and toy with the possibility of writing a cookbook and do other exciting things, I no longer find consolation in that music—I don't need consoling. I know it's for the best, but sometimes it's hard to let go, even when what you're letting go of is your own suffering. These are some of the songs I will miss the most, now that I'm no longer a mess of a human being:

1. "Accident Prone" by Jawbreaker: This is the song that said it all for me. It's pathetic and defeated, with fuzzy, weepy guitars. I listened to it over and over again, equating the lyrics to my own life, and on sleepless nights (of which there were many) I'd wander the deserted streets of downtown Ballard with this song on repeat on my CD player (it would be several years before I got an iPod). The opening line kills me: "What's the furthest place from here? It hasn't been my day for a couple years. What's a couple more?" Exactly. What is a couple more? I'll just live like this forever. If Blake Schwarzenbach can do it, so can I.

2. "Shade and the Black Hat" by Jeremy Enigk: This song is responsible for the saddest, most cinematic moment of my life. Every day on my way to work, I would drive up Pine Street, past the building at the corner of Melrose and Pine (where the bar called Chapel is now located). It used to be a funeral home.

Listening to this song one morning, I stopped at the light in front of the building just as the song approached the climactic explosion where Jeremy Enigk starts to wail and the orchestra kicks in. At that exact moment, with a fall wind gushing past, a man stepped out of the funeral home—he was holding a baby, trying to protect it from the wind, and he was wearing a nice black wool coat.

While Enigk was screaming about God or wine or whatever the vague lyrics are about, I convinced myself the man was there because his wife had just died. There he was, devastated, left with the baby he and his wife planned to raise together. My mind reeled—even if you find love, you're fucked because THAT PERSON WILL DIE. He could've just been using their bathroom. I don't know. But I wanted to cry in my car for hours.

3. "A Captive Audience" by the Velvet Teen: This is easily one of the most gorgeous and heartbreaking songs in the entire universe. Much like "Shade and the Black Hat," its sadness is intensified tenfold thanks to a delicate orchestration of crying strings and sweeping piano, but the real tear-jerking moments take hold when you listen to the lyrics about regret and loneliness—"Even the people that you call your friends/Can fuck you over in the subtlest ways/It'll be your comfort that you're always alone/They never cared about you anyway." UGH.

4. "Two People Blue" by the Hated: Yeah. So. I was hung up on a dude who liked me but couldn't be with me (life's real complicated like that when you're 23). How fitting that this song would be about two people who could never get it right. There are exactly 38 words to the song, which is nearly four minutes long, and I always found that poignant. In the warbliest verge-of-tears voice, Dan Littleton sings, "Why, when I near your door, must I turn away when I knew you so well? Why, when you came to me, did I send you away? When you came to me so long ago. Two people blue."

5. "Angeles" by Elliott Smith: Actually, no. This song doesn't belong on this list. This song can still completely wreck me, no matter how happy I am.

6. "My Sundown" by Jimmy Eat World: While "Accident Prone" is the anthem for simply accepting life is awful, this is a song about wanting to change things but then failing. Which is almost worse. Like nearly anything by Elliott Smith, this sparse, slow song can still get to me, even though it's post-Clarity Jimmy Eat World. I'm as surprised as you are.

7. "Touch" by Bright Eyes: At least a dozen Bright Eyes songs held spots in my constant rotation from 1999 to 2001, but "Touch" is literally about lying on the floor, alone, wishing for nothing more than "one night that's free of doubt and sadness." I listened to it constantly. Of course I did. That was all I ever wanted, too, Conor Oberst. Funny how that now I have it, though, I sometimes miss the wanting it.