Depression is a weird thing. It can affect anyone at anytime in their life. It doesn't matter who you are or how privileged or poor you are; it'll drain you. It doesn't matter how young or old or content or unsatisfied with your life you are. It doesn't matter if you're on holidays having a fantastic time during the day, depression will consume your mind and before you know it you're shaking on the ground crying and having an anxiety attack locked in the bathroom. It doesn't matter if you're surrounded by your best friends relaxing and watching a television show, depression won't allow you to enjoy that but instead takes you away mentally and tortures you with harsh words after harsh images after harsh ideas. It doesn't matter if you are a father watching your healthy wife and two young children play in the park, you can't help but think about how horrible things have happened to you, how imperfect you are and how you have no way to change those circumstances and the past. But the one thing about depression is that no one completely understands it. No one completely knows about how it affects every single person differently. No one completely knows that just because you don't see someone suffering first-hand doesn't mean they're not suffering at all. No one knows that you know that there is no 'real' reason that you are suffering and feel guilty for feeling these emotions and thinking these thoughts. No one knows.
We are told to communicate this and ask for help, yet those same people will sweep the topic under the rug and project a false perfection when judgement of others near. Maybe, just maybe, if everyone were to talk and help and try to understand, depression would be a little easier to cope with. Everyone could be there for everyone. Help could be received for the people it effects, both first and second-hand. But that would be the optimum goal, and depression won't allow that, well, not for you anyway. No, there's no way for you to escape it, not really. Your life will be horrible no matter the scenario.
And that's how depression takes over your mind and your life. It starts off as a whisper and before you know it, it is screaming at the top of its lungs 2 centimetres from your face, saliva coving your face as a result. But depression is sneaky, and it knows how to be deceiving, because only you can hear depressions shouts and torments, only you can feel the spit splattering your face, and only you can stop it. Depression gives you the freedom to explore in your mind. You accidentally stumble into the dark and depression engulfs you into its trap. That's when you realise that you never had real freedom, no, it was all a facade formed by overthinking.
And the last thing about depression is that no one will fully understand this. They won't have my memories or my experiences or my thoughts or my life. And I won't have yours. So no one can really wholly and completely understand what I express. You will all comprehend this differently, yet it resonates with so many others. So the concluding thought from all of this is that depression is a complex thing, a thing that cannot be seen or felt by anyone else apart from you. It has the potential to destroy you, to make you second guess your every thought and instinct for the rest of your life. Depression sucks, but it can be helped. Find the people that can assist you, whether it be friends, family, mentors and/or psychologist. Nothing is ever final; no thought, no action, not even death, and depression doesn't have to be either. You are in control. Fight depression with your two bare hands and tell it to piss off because you have been assigned one life and depression wasn't invited.
