This is an open letter to depression. Trigger warnings include: suicide, depression, self-harm and self-hate.

Dear Depression,

I am stronger than you, and I am weaker. You are my despised enemy and my closest companion. I have had you with me for longer than I can remember, but I'm just now getting to know you. You make me want to die, but this drives me to live. You are my inner demon, and I pull myself from hell every morning. Because I am stubborn, and I am strong. You will not beat me because my life is no prize to be won, it is mine.

Every day I wake up and you are there, ready to fight me again. Even when I have meds you show up, weaker but still persistent. You tell me to stay still, and you remind me I'm worthless. You tell me I'm not wanted and that my teachers do not mean any praise they give. You insist my friends hate me, that no one would care if I disappeared. Still I rise. I get myself up and I face the day. You won't shut up, but I drown you out. Pentatonix strangles your voice and soothes my nerves in between classes. Keats and Rowling lend their voices to my defense, giving me someone to have my back and listen when I cannot speak the atrocities I think. Your power is gone when I'm with those I love, at dinner I laugh and smile and spit in your face.

By the time I go to bed I've almost forgotten you, but there you are anyway sharing my bed. Like a sadistic lover you whisper in my ear that everything happy was a lie. Ice cold fingers trace self-loathing down my spine as you tell me to cut so I can feel something. You insist that my blood is poison, not to me but the world, and I would do everyone a favor by releasing it in a bath. Perhaps I should beat myself to unconsciousness is what you suggest next, put myself in a coma and maybe not be found in time. Instead, I watch TV shows, and I travel in the TARDIS, I hunt with the Winchesters and I am on the side of the angels with Sherlock Holmes. By the time I can sleep, I remember I am not alone and that I can keep fighting. Once again, you lose.

I sleep the night away, usually free from your voice. Only I wake yet again to the never-ending cycle. No matter what I do, I still have you with me. I fight every day and every day I win. Until I die by my own hand I will win and you will lose. Until I see non-contestable proof that what you say is true that day will not come. Until the voice inside of me that says, "one more day" every day is silenced, I will continue on. I am strong, and you are wrong. I will rise and you will fall. I will live, and you will die.

Forever sincerely, irrevocably and triumphantly not yours,

The Victor