Dear Depression,

I have known you for a very long time. Too long in fact. And I have to tell you right here and now, I don't like you. It's not that you purposely set out to do something to mess up my life. It's not that you decided one day to show up and pick on me, bother me, and make my life difficult. You don't do that to anyone. I've known that for a long time. You don't just decide to interrupt someone's life, screw things up for them, make them miserable one day, happy the next day, and be the cause of emotional problems, family problems, and even something as serious as suicide. You just happen.

And I hate you for it.

I'm not sure when you decided to show up in my life, but you just happened along at some point and time, and let me tell you this - You really screwed me up. And you've just stayed in my life since the first day you opened the front door of my house and decided to never leave.

I wish it wasn't me. I wish it wasn't anyone. I wish you didn't exist. I wish nobody knew you. I wish that you weren't anywhere in anyone's life, especially mine. But you stuck around. I don't know when you came by my house, but for some reason, you've stuck around and you won't leave me alone.

And I hate you for it.

Every day I wake up, I sense you, I can feel you, and I know you are there. You are like that creepy person in a horror movie. You hide outside someone's window. You sneak around in the bushes outside of someone's house. You peer in the windows like some stalker. You are out there somewhere, just waiting for that moment to pounce on some poor unsuspecting person that is having a good day. You show up, knock on the door, and then without warning, you screw up their day. Some times, you screw up their weeks. And for others like me, you screw up their lives. You've screwed up mine.

And I hate you for it.

One day, you decided to show up. And you never left. You darken my days. You make my sunny days get cloudy. You bring the clouds out in a day where I've seen rainbows. You bring my happy moods down to the level of a gutter full of rain. You make it so hard to enjoy a full day, a full week, or a whole month. I never know when you're going to show up and ruin my day. And I wish it wasn't so. But no matter what I do, how much I pray, whatever I say, or how much I ask, you just keep showing up and you don't leave. You keep coming back time and time again. And you won't let me be happy.

And I hate you for it.

I don't even remember when it happened. I don't remember when you showed up. But I know that day after day, I started feeling bad. Day after day, I started feeling down in the dumps. I would look at myself in the mirror and not sure what I saw in myself, what people liked about me, or what I wanted to do with my day. Some days, I couldn't even leave the house. I didn't want to go out with friends. I didn't want to answer the phone. I didn't want to ride my bike. I didn't want to do anything. And the next day, I'd wake up, be in a great mood, be happier than I'd been in days, weeks or months, and I'd have a great day. Until the next day, I'd wake up, and I'd hate life. And I'd want to go back to bed and never leave the house.

This is what depression does to people. This is what you've done to people. This is how you affect people's lives. This is how you destroy a happy day. This is how you take a rainbow out of someone's sky. This is how you bring out dark clouds on a bright and happy day. And this is how you destroy families. This is how you make people want to step off a building. This is how you make people not want to live anymore. This is what you do. This is where you live. This is the door you walk through. And this is how you disrupt the lives and days of ordinary people like me.

And I hate you for it.

One thing people don't know about you is that you can ruin a perfectly ordinary person's life. You show up into someone's life that owns a nice expensive car, a big house with a pretty lawn. You show up at the house that has nice flowers in the yard, plants out front, trees in the back, nice lines from the lawn mower, a perfectly paved driveway, and maybe even the white picket fence. You show up at someone's house that has the little dog in the backyard on a leash, the cute garbage can out by the curb, and you knock on the door. And then you screw everything up. You did that to me. The only difference is, I didn't have any of that. I was a little kid. Maybe not even a kid, but a little baby. I don't know for sure. I wasn't old enough to figure it out. But as I got older, I knew something was wrong. I didn't act normal. I didn't do or say the same things others my age did. I didn't act or behave like people my age did. And I wasn't like my friends.

And I hate you for it.

All these years, I'm still different. But the worst part about it? I'm that person with the cute kids. I'm that person with a good paying job. I'm the person that drives a pretty nice car, has some righteously awesome friends, and manages to do pretty well day by day. But yet you continue to show up. You knock on my door. You darken my skies. You take the rainbows away. And you hide the sun.

And I hate you for it.

Depression, you disgust me. You anger me. You make me want to throw up. You ruin my days. You've ruined friendships. You've cost me relationships. You've even cost me a lot of money. You cost me my family. I used to have a mom, a dad, a brother and a sister. And I blame you for my mood swings, my attitude shifts, and I blame you for the erratic behavior that I've shown for so many years that has it made it near impossible for so many people to even want to talk to me. I haven't given up. I still fight you. I still wake up and come out swinging. But it makes me hate you more and more every day because you won't go away. And guess what? I know I'm not the only person that you mess with. I know that you screw up others lives. I know that you make it difficult to get through days for so many people.

I have even lost friends of mine to you because you were so strong they couldn't deal with it and they killed themselves. But guess what? I'm still here. And I'm not going away. Not today. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. And not next week. Because I refuse to let you win. I refuse to let you knock on my door, open my windows, step in front of my car and destroy me. You are the hardest battle I've ever fought in my life. You are not friendly. You have cost me more than I can even talk about in this article I am writing.

And I hate you for it.

Me.