Depression: a serious medical condition in which a person feels very sad, hopeless, and unimportant and often is unable to live in a normal way.

Anxiety: a fear or nervousness about what might happen.

These two definitions are so simple but they don't tell the real story of how you feel when you deal with both at the same time. Dealing with one, or even both, comes in many forms—some more extreme than others.

It is that car—

You know the one; the one in front of you swerving all over the place. It is hoping that the might slow down and hit you with just enough force to hurt you so bad that the pain inside of you goes away, but hoping that it spares the other people in the car with you from any pain.

It is the paper cut you got—

The one you can't seem to stop splitting open to make it bleed more because watching the blood come out and form its perfect little drops is, for some reason, relaxing—as though the blood is laced with stress and you are letting it ooze out.

It is the elevator—

The one you get in when you have to go up ten floors but as soon as the doors close leaves you gripping the rails on the side till you are white-knuckled all the way to your destination.

It is the bus or car that passed you—

It just barely missed hitting you as you went to cross the street, but you don't care. You don't care that you could have died had you taken that first step into the street 2.694 seconds earlier: this is the gray area.

It is waking up and going to bed feeling like total shit—

You wake up wondering why, for whatever reason, you didn't die in your sleep because going through another day seems like hell. You go to bed feeling like your heart is broken, so you lay there solitary, crying silent tears.

It is wearing a fake smile—

You wear it to make other people happy and to keep the layers that you have around your heart up, because telling someone how you really feel inside might make you cry in the middle of the day. Wearing that fake smile tells people that you are okay even though you feel dead inside.

It is those suicide notes—

The ones you wrote when you were younger when you thought the world was over because you got in trouble again for something stupid. It is the ones you write now with utmost delicacy and thought process, so that the one day you might actually write one that someone reads. The one that people reads has to be perfect—so that in your final moments of life, you had control over one aspect of your life.

It is sitting in a bathroom stall—

Because this is the one place that you have complete privacy. It is the place where it is safe to let a tear fall, because no matter what, you are surrounded by four walls where no one can see you.

It is that song—

The one that you hear that instantly brings you back to a place where you were mentally worse than you are now. The one that makes you wonder if you will ever feel better.

It is those photos—

The ones with the genuine smile. The ones that make you wonder at what point your life changed to make you feel so awful all the time. Then there are the ones that you have that fake smile plastered on your face. You know the ones—they make up a lot of the pictures that are on your Facebook and Instagram pages. The ones that everyone says, "Look at you, you are so pretty", and you say, "Thank you"—but you know that when the picture was taken, you were crying inside.

It is that hug—

The one that is supposed to tell you everything will be okay. The one that should make you feel better, but makes you bawl your eyes out instead because you have been holding in the pain for so long that you cannot bear to hold it in anymore.

It is choosing not to kill yourself—

Even though the pain is so bad, and your heart races all the time. It is choosing not to take your final breath because your parents always told you that "Killing yourself is the selfish way to go because you are leaving everyone else around you to hurt" and you don't want your last moments to be something that makes them disappointed in you.

It hurts like hell on a daily basis and ruins your day a lot of days—but still, here you are, reading the end of this article maybe relating, maybe not. But alas, you are here, and you know that somewhere in your day. you find a tiny glimmer of hope that lasts just a second. The hope that one day, you might not fear the future and that things will turn around. But that one second, that 0.001% of your day, makes all the difference. It is that tiny inkling of hope that gives you the strength to carry on so that one day you might get everything you ever dreamed of.