Explaining Depression To Those We Love Most

What can depression be described as?

"...depression is a shape shifter. One day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear, the next, it’s the bear."

How does it impact your everyday life?

"...I make plans. I make plans but I don’t want to go. I make plans because I know I should want to go. I know sometimes I would have wanted to go. It’s just not that fun having fun when you don’t want to have fun, Mom."

These are the powerful and passionate words of Sabrina Benaim as she uses spoken poetry to depict the difficulty that comes with trying to explain her depression to her mother. Through her poem, she creates such a daunting and tormenting personality for depression that speaks to the overwhelming truth as to how interwoven it becomes in our everyday routine. Her powerful delivery of the line, "...when I tell you, “I’ve been super busy lately,” I mean I’ve been falling asleep watching Sports Center on the couch. To avoid confronting the empty side of my bed. But my depression always drags me back to my bed." This paints such an accurate picture of how easily this illness can get a grip of your home, really anything you find comfort in, and make you a stranger to it all.

Society has created so many misconceptions about what it's like to truly struggle depression. To say that it's only triggered by a traumatic event only causes more questions to come up as to why it has to be an invisible force, why it has to appear unexpectedly. One has to ask if we knew when to expect it, don't you think we'd know how to control it by now? People often expect others suffering from depression to simply define its impact as if its whole existence and role can fit into what can only be compared to a 140 character update box on Twitter. There is never enough room and there are really never enough words. To say that depression only makes you sad is to question why so many of its friends, anxiety, confusion, loneliness, and defeat, also sit by your side when you're lying on the bathroom floor trying figure out why you can't see the world in color anymore.

Sabrina's ability to compare depression as a bear, her anxiety as a cousin, and her life as a place that makes her feel like a tourist visiting, demonstrates the tragedy behind how expected and familiar depression becomes to someone, to where one sees it within their everyday surroundings.

What's the most heartbreaking is the fact that the one person she is trying to get through to is her mom. To see such a disconnect between mother and daughter shows just how important it is for parents to provide support even if they can't provide understanding. In the end, all anyone can ask for is just to have someone that is willing to get through being stuck with them, who will help them center themselves once again, even if it's just for a little while.