Depression sucks. Duh.
I fell like people who don’t suffer from depression don’t fully understand what the feeling is like.
No, I’m not just sad.
No, I’m not just having a bad day.
No, it’s not just a rough patch.
No, I can’t stop taking my medication.
People don’t get it. They post article after article and video after video on every branch of social media claiming to raise awareness for mental illness. But when they are encounter it in real life, face to face, they revert back to the stigmas.
They don’t understand.
They don’t understand the numbness, the emptiness, the exhaustion and the guilt. They don’t comprehend how you can appear to have everything and still be “sad”.
“Why are you sad? You have no reason to be. What happened?”
Depression doesn’t need a reason. One day you’re a happy-go-lucky person, the next you have no aspiration. Your body doesn’t feel like your own. You stumble through your everyday life trying to act as normal and as happy as everyone else when really it feels like the whole world is weighing you down, pushing you deeper and deeper into the abyss people call life. But you still continue on.
“You slept all day, why are you tired?”
You’ve come to accept the bags under your eyes and coffee cup in your hand as part of your permanent look. The coffee does its best to keep you functioning but it can only hold off the dreaded grey cloud for so long. Eventually it will absorb you, and the 10 hours of sleep you got last night will be forgotten. But you still continue on.
“You’re overreacting, it’s just stress.”
You thought this in the beginning too. It’s just stress. It’ll pass. 1 month…3 months…2 years… You’ve no accepted that it won’t ever go away. It consumes you everyday. You’re over whelmed. Your body is heavy. Stress and depression are the best of friends with the common goal of wearing you out. But you still continue on.
You fight the stigma every day you continue on.
You beat mental illness every day you continue on.
You get stronger every damn day you continue on.
So keep fighting no matter what anyone says.
Keep fighting no matter how strong the depression gets.
Keep fighting because everyday that you fight, you win.
Keep fighting because you are, and always will be, stronger than any mental illness is.
The Over Thinker 
No, they don’t understand, and I think they don’t really want to understand. They don’t want to acknowledge that there is this horrible thing out there that is beyond the reach of reason. They don’t want to believe there is something too dark for them to understand. They don’t want to admit to one more way life is hard and unfair and unbearable and sometimes not really worth living. So rather than admit this, they do their very best to build of the mental protection of denial. Which is not helpful for those of us with the very real, very ugly problem.
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Absolutely. They want the positive attention that comes with “supporting mental illness” but the shoot down everyone who comes forward with an actual mental illness. It’s quite sad but I hope one day their ignorance towards mental health will be a thing of the past.
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