People think depression is all about sadness, and that depression is crying. People think it’s black clothing or isolation. Depression is so much more than that. A lot of people don’t really know what depression is. Depression is the constant state of being numb. Being numb to emotions. You’re too numb to even create a tiny white lie. You wake up in the morning just to go back to sleep again and it’s not easy getting out of bed, because you feel like you have a ton of bricks on your chest. People with depression cannot wait to get back into bed. That is where they feel safe and can just be alone.

You are just going through the motions. Days aren’t really days. They are only obstacles that we need to face. You feel helpless, worthless, and even hopeless. I’m not kidding when I say this, but it feels like you just got your heart ripped out of your chest. You can feel the pit at the bottom of your stomach. Those with depression are just trying to get by. They just want to survive, but they certainly are not living. When depression happens, it happens fast. You don’t even see it coming; you can’t even feel it. For some people it lasts a few days and for others it could lasts for months.

Having depression makes you lose any motivation you had. With this illness there is a numbing sadness. You have this blank look on your face and you pretty much feel like a zombie. You feel like you’re trapped; like you are under water drowning, gasping for air, but you can see everyone around you breathing, smiling and laughing. You feel paralyzed. You’re standing there with a bunch of people and you can’t move at all. You can hear everyone around you and you can see them all, but all you do is watch, emotionless. When someone is depressed he or she grasps on to anything that can get he or she through the day. It’s the overwhelming sense of completely nothing. Zero. Just complete numbness. There’s this desire for anything that will help you make it one day to the next. All we want to do is stop the pain. The emotional and mental pain is worse than any physical pain and we want to feel something else.

We are trying to keep it together, not only for us, but for everyone else. We do not want to break, so we will do anything to stop that from happening. All we want to do is live, but not like this. People with depression don’t just want to survive; they want to feel alive. Sometimes it’s hard to believe if we will ever feel alive again. Those with this illness become so used to knowing what the pain feels like. If depression ever ended, some people would have no idea what they would be feeling at that moment, because it doesn’t happen very often.

No one wants to be depressed and we know we can’t run away from it, but it’s so hard to face it. It’s like we are stuck right in the middle and we are too numb to move, too scared to make a choice. Sometimes instead of grasping on to something that takes away the pain, we just need to let go. We need to fall hard before we can fly high.

Depression is different for everyone and there are actually different types of depression. I’m just writing how depression is for me and how it feels when I’m going through it. I’ve had depression for about four years now and I was diagnosed with Severe Major Depressive Disorder. Depression is a scary illness. It makes you lose hope and you honestly can’t do anything about it.