How Depression Is Silent

You know that feeling? The one where the darkness starts creeping in. You may be at home laughing or at work doing some paperwork but it finds you and you feel this onset of worry. You have this pit in your stomach that makes you not want to eat.

You look around and everyone else is carrying on with their lives and this is only affecting you. The internal battle that only you have to fight. It wears you out. It is exhausting. You go to sleep to hope for some reprieve and you might get it or your dreams turn to nightmares.

You get up the next morning and it's still there. You take your medicine in hopes it'll ease it up some and maybe it does. Maybe your morning is bearable but that medicine doesn't last forever and you're only supposed to take it when you really need it because your doctor doesn't want you depending on this. If you run out he might not give you any more.

You smile for the people at work. It's forced but most of them don't notice. You mindlessly move through day ignoring the comments of maybe you should smile more because the forced ones aren't enough for some people.

So you trudge on. You get through the night. You shower and get ready for bed just to start the whole day over the same way.

Until one day you wake up and it's gone. It came and went out of the blue. So you take a deep breath and smile and enjoy the days to come because you know it'll be back for no reason. The medicine only helps hold it back some.

It's still a struggle and an uphill battle but you make it.

Living with depression isn't easy. I struggle with it every day. Anti-depressants help, but they don't cure. Depression is a silent illness. You can't see it like you can a broken bone. Don't tell someone to just get over it or that there's nothing on. We'd love to have happy days all the time but sometimes we can't.

Sometimes we don't want to get up in the morning.

Listen to someone if they want to talk. Don't give advice unless it's asked for and give them a hug if they want it. Because we all need it sometimes.