For those who live with Major Depressive Disorder, every day is a battle; And sometimes that battle gets a hell of a lot harder. Relapsing has been a lingering fear of mine since my first major depressive episode at the age of sixteen. I have lived my life terrified of what I always called "getting bad again," and now I am here. I am bad again. And, to put it lightly, it really f*cking sucks.

I want to show, in train-of-thought formatting, what it's actually like to live with mental illness because I am sick and literally tired of the glorification and simplification of something so many people are struggling with.

Here is my struggle.

I constantly feel as if I have a chill down my spine, but the feeling runs down the sides of my neck and behind my eyes. My body feels like it is being pinned to the bottom of a swimming pool and my mind is panicking because I don't understand how I'm sinking when I know how to swim. I feel empty and yet so full of everything that is bad. At some points, ending my life seems like the easy way out, but even the easy way out isn't easy.

Depression isn't a pretty boy kissing your cut-up wrists while you take a picture. Depression is trying to take apart your razor in the shower while you silently sob because you can't f*cking breathe. Depression is stinging slashes under hot water. Depression is the inability to eat. Depression is lying in bed with burning eyes wide open because your body isn't as tired as your mind. Depression is sunken eyes. Depression is wondering if you can overdose on Tylenol. Depression is curling up in a ball and trying to figure out why you feel so alone when there are people all around you. Depression is gratification in a dull knife because it hurts more than a sharp one. Depression is not pretty. Depression is not romantic. Even the prettiest person could not fill the emptiness that depression is, and I hate myself because, in some moments, I still don't believe that.

I know that I scare the people that love me when I cry, scream, yell, panic, and mostly when I say nothing and when I disappear. I am sorry for that. I am so completely and utterly sorry, but I am scared too.

I am scared that my future children might also know what it feels like to drown in the air that is supposed to keep them alive. I am scared that I might never find someone who can handle the 70 percent chance that I will relapse again, and again. I am scared that the people who love me will get tired of me being a nuisance. Mostly, I am scared that I am going to kill myself and these other reasons to be scared, terrified, will be rendered irrelevant.

Depression is the fact that it took me an entire week to write these 500 words when I used to be able to write five pages in an hour.

I am tired and I am scared and I want to get better, but it f*cking hurts.