You know that feeling? The one where you feel like there's an anchor to your heart weighing it down to your feet. That feeling that consumes your strength and willpower. That feeling that makes you draw into yourself and alienate from those around you. There are times when that feeling is a day to day emotion and you struggle for it not to drain you. There are days where getting out of bed in the morning becomes more like a painful reminder that you have a whole day ahead where you have to act normal, where you have to smile and laugh and say "yeah, I'm fine". Are you really fine though? Are those cuts on your arm fine? Are those tears you muffled in your 9 A.M. class fine? Is the empty, hollow pit you have in your stomach fine? Are depression, anxiety, and hardships fine? No. None of this is fine, and most of the time it can seem unbearable. It can seem like the weight that looms over your chest will never reprieve. That the grey cloud that stalks you will never cease to turn your days gloomy. That the agony set in your eyes will never be washed away. And you will be forced to live this life with a dark cloud haunting every move you make.

Sometimes it does get better. There are the instances where the pressure and darkness slowly dwindle with time, but for some of us, it just gets worse. It gets to the point where cigarette ashes and empty liquor bottle become your tears and the cloud that was once grey is now black glooming over you like an ominous foreshadowing of sorrow. Your "I'm fines'" have turned into silenced cries for help, and your days begin with looking yourself in the mirror as tears drop from your chin like a flower losing a petal. Because like the flower loses a part of itself with that lost petal, so do we. With every tear, we lose ourselves a little more. We are rudely awakened to what depression is doing to us - conquering our soul. Consuming it with negativity and suppressed emotions, it thrives off our instability. It is given joy as our tears tumble down our face and smack the hardwood floor. It finds peace in the fact we are dying inside. It grins when we feel lost. Souls and spirits of anguish begin to feed off you like a tiger tearing flesh from its prey. They are eating you alive. Don't you see? Every time you are hit with the conviction that you cannot do this anymore, you allow the darkness to win. You allow a tiny piece of yourself to be lost. You allow that dark cloud that lingers above you to engulf you in its shadow. And then you are defeated. You feel loneliness and uncertainty revel together to make unhappiness and you cannot move. You are handicapped to depression and can feel it dwell around you. This is when you've hit rock bottom.

There comes a moment that comes after you've hit rock bottom where you decide "I'm done". I'm done letting the events that have happened to me stand in the way of the events to come. I am done dreading getting out of bed and watching tears roll down my face. I AM DONE. I am done allowing darkness to inhabit my life. The saddest part is even when you make that decision, you still have your bad days. You still have the days where you tell yourself "I don't want to be here anymore". Depression never really leaves you. You are always pulling it along with you. It's just sometimes a feather and other times it's a fifty-pound brick. It might go out to lunch, but by dinner it has you debilitated again. Debilitated by the exhaustion of life. For those days where you feel better off dead, please remember this: If you don't want to live for yourself, live for me. If you don't want to smile for yourself, smile for me. If you don't want to get out of bed for yourself, do it for me - some random girl behind a computer screen that has felt as empty as you do now. That has looked at herself in the mirror and fought back the urge to end it. To just simply cease to exist. No matter how desperately you think you cannot do this, I promise you, you can. Life has a funny way of showing you just how much you can take. Don't question its ability to see your resilience. You are never given more than you can handle, even though sometimes it hurts like hell. You will make it through, I promise. Just keep going for the random girl behind the computer.