A Way to Sum up My Depression

When people hear the word depression... it's often associated with sadness. This is one of the biggest misconceptions ever. Sadness is a common human emotion. It's something we feel when something goes wrong, like when you lose a loved one or when you go through a break up or divorce. Now depression is different. It's different because depression is being sad when everything in your life goes right.

I was diagnosed with depression when I was 14. Before this if you met me, I was a happy go lucky kid who had everything you could imagine. A good family, who would move mountains for me to make me happy, I went to a good school, had great friends and my life was picture perfect. Even though I had all this I was never really happy. I always felt like life was too much to endure. Some days getting out of bed felt like a mission on it's own. My whole life felt like it was crumbling before me and all I could was stand and watch it happen while my heart shattered into a million little pieces.

Depression if I have to sum it up right now it will be simple. War. It's me against my own mind and there's no time limit. It's a constant 24-hour battle. My mind is the enemy trying to break me down with grenades of self-doubt and guns of insults to myself. Anxiety is the viewer at home watching the war go on with nervousness that makes her bite her nails until it bleeds and scratch the skin on the side of her nails until she draws blood. This war goes on and the medication is the first aid kit to remedy all injury that occurs throughout battle time.

There's a quote that goes, "You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before and that my love is bravery."

That's who we are, we're warriors. Every single one of us who fight the demons that tell us suicide is our only way out. That cutting will make the pain go away. That alcohol will absorb all the depression and make us feel just enough numbness to have a good nights sleep for once. It pulls us back to bed because mentally we are so exhausted and waking up is more like a nightmare and a constant challenge that pulls us down to a sea of horror and drowns us into it until we can't even move.

This is my depression. Even though I HATE some of the places depression has taken me... I hate it but in so many ways I'm grateful for it. In ways depression has taught me so much, it has taught me that through the dark tunnel it takes me through there is light. In the bottom of valleys there are peaks and no matter how bad anything gets with depression the bad is only temporary and good will be there in the end of it all.

Depression is one of the most documented topics of todays culture but it's one of the least discussed. We as a community need to speak up and let those suffering know they are not alone and let them know that stand with them and no matter how bad it gets, they have people who care and won't attach a stigma to their pain and their illness.

If we can go ahead and do this, imagine the change it will bring? Starting with just one community, then city, soon country and thereafter the world? Because that is all we wish for. A place where we can be accepted and not treated like we have a disability.