Depression. There is so much more to it than just sadness. Depression is when you are with your friends and all of them are laughing and having a good time and they are genuinely smiling, but you are stuck having to fake a smile and force a laugh because the ache in your chest is overwhelming and always constant. Sometimes you will have good days. On these days, the ache in your chest will hurt less and you might actually feel like you can conquer things. Then on other days the ache in your chest can become unbearable to where you are stuck in your bed clenching on to your sheets sobbing. These days are the hardest. They will always hurt the most, and sometimes nobody will even know about them because you are “sick,” which is not an exaggeration. Sometimes you have to say that you’re “too tired” to hang out with friends because the pain is a little too hard that day and you just can’t make it. You slack on your school work because you lose all of your motivation and drive to do well, but there is also a piece of you that will always strive to impress everyone around you.

Sometimes depression can feel like you're drowning and you can't seem to save yourself. Or sometimes it feels as though you are suffocating with no explanation. You don't have to have trauma to be depressed, that's the hard part about this. You could have every single reason in the world to be happy, but it doesn't matter. Depression can happen to anyone at any time and it can be the hardest thing that anyone will go through. The constant feeling that you aren't good enough or that you never will be. The feeling of "it was all my fault" when you had nothing to do with it. Sometimes, it just happens.

Most of the time, the people that surround you do not even know that your depression exists because you hide it and try and pretend that it isn't there because sometimes that is easier than having to explain why you are depressed for no reason.

To be completely honest, depression is like this little monster that follows you around every single place that you go, hurting you in some way to make sure that you aren’t allowed to be happy. It will always pick at you or gang up on you with the little demon inside your head and torment you until you feel like you just can’t take it anymore. But how do you kill your sadness without killing yourself? That was a question that I often asked myself. I wanted all of the pain and ache to stop so that I could enjoy happiness; however, I did not want to die. I simply wanted all of the demons that were attached to me to disappear. I wanted to live and see my life with happiness after going through depression. I slowly learned that depression will never just go away; it will always be a constant battle. There will be days that you will do well with the battle, and there will always be days that you will feel hopeless. However, all the days that you wake up and are breathing is a win in this constant, draining battle. It will just simply always be there.