Rewind with me a few years would you? The years is 2006, and Myspace is still relevant, Emo and Scene are the latest in a series of obnoxious trends, and some would dare call it the post-2000′s youth-identity culture. Cutting has become a media circus of obsession and analysis, but to the youth scene it’s another fashion statement–wearing your mental illnesses on your sleeve. In the backlash of these trendy assholes, we’ve associated sadness with pathetic weakness, despair with these vain kids and their Panic at the Disco posters. Mental illness has become associated with people who are only faking for attention.

Let’s talk about how much depression sucks, and slap everyone in the face who says that they’re suffering from depression because nobody wants to date them.

This is what depression is for me: it’s a crippling hopelessness that will possess you at random, and despite everything in your life being absolutely perfect, you can’t shake the feeling of overwhelming, and often crippling despair. It’s waking up in bed and not moving for hours because just breathing hurts. It’s staring endlessly at the wall because you don’t have the energy or strength to concentrate on anything. Every moment of your existence is just fighting to remain functional.

It’s pain, endless, unreasonable or predictable pain. Some days are better than others, and you don’t feel quite as bad as you normally do, and then on other days it’s everything you can do just to stay alive. If I were to invent hell for a character in a story, I’d put them inside my head for a few days.

In our society, there is still an extreme stigma against mental illness. We tell victims of depression and anxiety to get over it, as if it were something that they could control. It’s not like having your dog killed and then feeling sad for a while, but eventually moving on with your life, it’s an actual illness. Your brain is secreting all the wrong chemicals at all the wrong times. With what we know of the functions of the brain, one would think that this would be common knowledge by now, something easy to accept, but we don’t; we’re still living in the dark ages!

I’m working on getting help for myself, on doing whatever I can to keep pushing just a little longer. This is not a post meant to complain, but to rather express what my life has been like on a daily basis. It’s actually gotten worse in recent months, and is a problem I can no longer bury or ignore. This post is coming open with those issues, and is accepting them.

I wish I could break down on some days. You see people with depression break down all the time in movies. It doesn’t work like that, not often. For the most part, victims of depression can smile, laugh, joke, talk about normal things, but inside they feel like something in them is breathing it’s last breath…over, and over, and over, and over again.