Living with depression is one of the worst things in the world. It is one of the hardest things to deal with. It ruins your life. It changes your moods from one minute to another. It loses your friendships. It ruins families. It puts you in moods that you can't get out of for minutes, hours, days or weeks at a time. It keeps you in bed. It makes you lose jobs. IT changes your life.

And you can't just wake up one day and turn it off.

When a person has depression, it's not a choice. It's not something that someone wants. It's not something that a person asks for. It's not on someone's bucket list, wish list or a choice they decided one day to make. It just happens. They are born with it. Call it a chemical imbalance. Call it a body screwup. Call it a malfunction in your system. Call it what you want. It's called depression. It isn't always fixed with medication. It isn't always fixed by talking to a therapist. It's not always easy to deal with. And it won't go away.

Whether you are rich, poor, black, white, purple, live in a big house, small house, drive a car, motorcycle, or have a job, depression hits everyone. It does not discriminate. It doesn't pick people at random. It just happens. People are born with it. They see doctors to deal with it. They take pills to fight it. They see therapists to talk about it. It affects everything they do and everything they are. It ruins good days. It keeps bad days bad. It already makes bad days worse. And you can't just look to the sky, say a prayer, ask for a wish to be answered and expect it to go away. It doesn't work that way.

And you can't turn it off like a light switch.

Depression isn't something, much like people think, that you can just "get over" or "move on" through it or "deal with it." It doesn't work that way. Depression can ruin a minute, an hour, a day or a week. It can stop people from calling you back. It can stop your relationships from working. And it can make you question what's wrong with you. Depression makes you feel like you're to blame for everything that goes wrong. And it can change the person that you are.

Depression doesn't just pick someone at random and decide they're going to have it. Depression doesn't decide to chose a rich person one day, a poor person the next day, a white person one day, a black person the next day, a school teacher one day and a lawyer the next day. It hits everyone. It affects everyone. It changes everyone.

Even if you don't have depression? You still deal with it. It may be a family member. It may be a neighbor. It may be someone you are dating. It may be someone you are married to. It might even be one of your kids.

Depression knows no bias. It does not discriminate. It hurts everyone. It hits everyone. And it doesn't go away.

Depression does to a person that many other things don't. If you get drunk it goes away eventually. If you do drugs the euphoria and effect goes away eventually. No matter what it is, it affects people in different ways. But eventually, it goes away. Depression doesn't go away. It stays with you forever. And no matter what you do? You can't change it.

Depression - It ruins people's lives. It destroys families. It causes people to commit suicide. It makes someone into something they aren't. And it's to blame for mass murders, mass shootings and a plethora of other criminal activities and immoral behavior. No matter what you say, how you call it or what you think? Depression affects everyone.

You. Me. And everyone else around us. I know. Because I have it.