"What's depression like?" He asked.

February 28th '14

Depression is like a cage around your mind, surpressing any positive thoughts. It's like a dictator in a country, telling you exactly what to do, to feel, to think. 

If you try and fight it, it comes back at you twice as hard. Knocks you over, locks you away in a room full of darkness and sadness and screaming voices that are created by none but yourself.

Regardless of how many people have tried to understand depression, I'm sure there's nobody who can ever explain why sometimes people fall into this hole. Why they start hurting themselves or the others around them, why they decide they are terrible people that don't deserve to be alive.

Because that's what depression does to you. Even though you can do nothing about feeling sad, even though it's not your fault, it gives you the feeling that you are a terrible person. A terrible person for pushing people away, for being so selfish, for being so sad without a reason, for being so spoiled that you can't even be happy even though nothing is wrong with you.

Depression is something, someone, who once it has crawled into your mind and hidden itself in dark corners, never leaves you alone. Especially not at night, when it comes out of its hiding place as if it's a monster from a children's story and starts eating away the person you once were. 

Your forget how to put on any smile but a fake one, you start trying to be invisble, you try to push everyone away because you know you'll hurt them. You know you'll say something, do something, that will hurt them. Why? Because you're a terrible person. That's what your mind tells you. You're a terrible person, you don't deserve anyone, anything, never. 

To have these thoughts nibbling away your original personality, that fun and outgoing person you once were, is a process which many people refer to as "drowning". Parts of you die, get eaten away, get replaced by new things. Dark things, emotionless, without happiness, lots of tears and loneliness but still you believe you are a terrible person.

If I say that depression has the power to kill you, I'm not blowing things up. I'm telling the truth. Depression is like poison to a person. It kills slowly and painfully. It drowns you in sadness, loneliness and pain. It's like you're being punched and kicked by someone that nobody but you can see and feel and nobody understands. 

It's you against this thing. Your own demon. You wake up tired, you go to bed tired, you see no point in going on anymore because there's nobody who would ever care to help you out of it. Nobody who would ever understand what you are going through or what you have been through or what has been going through your mind lately.

And you're a terrible person, so why would they anyway?

This is where many go wrong. Lock themselves away, let depression eat them and eventually die, because no one ever saw and you never spoke. You never showed, you never let them see, you let depression rule you.

But this can't happen to any of you. Don't let depression win. Don't let it become stronger than you and don't let it make you believe things that are not true. You are not a terrible person. You deserve to live, you deserve to have people around you, you deserve to be happy and wake up without feeling tired. 

You can't keep on locking people out. You can't keep hiding yourself in the darkness hoping that you will either die or this thing will either die, because depression will not go away by itself and you can not die.

You need to find someone, anybody, who will help you defeat monsters. You have to be your own hero, but every hero has its sidekick. 

This is your story, this is your fairy tale, and I have never read a fairy tale in which the monster wins. You are stronger than this. So stop picking up a blade and pick up a sword and kill the thing.

Kill the thing and be happy.

- Kyran