Merriam-Webster defines depression as a state of feeling sad.

A state of feeling sad. It seems pretty simple, right?

I was going to try and come up with a better definition, but to be honest, there’s no possible way I could fit the meaning of that word into one sentence. And even then, it took me a really long time to come up with an accurate description of what it really feels like, because most of the time there isn’t any feeling at all.

Depression is looking at yourself in the mirror and not recognizing the person you see. It’s taking a shower and still not feeling clean. It’s waking up some mornings and wishing you hadn’t. It’s crying yourself to sleep to drown out the screaming in your head. It’s lonely and it’s unforgiving. It leaves no room for love or happiness. It leaves no room for anything.

I was once an innocent child with an imagination bigger than the sun. My body hadn’t yet been touched by the stress and pain of the world. I was soft and timid and unaware of what the future would hold. I wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything, because I had nothing to be afraid of. I loved with a love that most children never lose. I didn’t have time to be sad, simply because I was too busy being happy.

I remember the day I asked every higher being to make me less forgiving and more selfish so that I would stop getting hurt. I started to see a soft heart go hard from the walls I would wrap around it. My once trusting mind started expecting very little from anyone else, and too much from myself. My smiles became forced, because if I didn’t, people would ask questions that I didn’t have the energy to answer. My once child-like love became harsh and un-compassionate. My feelings slowly died, and with them, so did the innocent child with the soft heart and happy soul. I watched that innocent child become everything that I hated, and I resented myself for it.

I could try to explain to you exactly what it was. I could try to explain how destroying myself just so that other people couldn’t, was the only kind of control I had. I could try to explain how the tears stopped flowing because the illness had drained every bit of feeling from my body. I could try to explain how after four years, there are still mornings that I wake up and wish I hadn’t. But I can’t.

I can’t explain how one day I can start to see that innocent child come back, and the next day I find myself rocking back and forth on a bathroom floor. I can’t explain how I went two years without crying, and now I can’t stop. I can’t explain how some days I feel everything crashing down on my chest like a ton of bricks, and others I can’t feel anything at all. I can’t explain why some days I am proud of myself, and others I want to self-destruct.

If there is one thing I do know, it’s that depression never gets easier, but you will get better. People may confuse your bad days as a sign of weakness, but what they don’t know is that those are the days you are fighting your hardest. Sometimes you will have a few good days, and all the sudden it hits you. Everything. It will hurt to talk, to breathe, to exist. Surviving can be so difficult at times, but nobody wants to hear that. Sometimes your biggest accomplishment will just be making it through the day, and that’s okay. One day it will be more than that.

It will hurt like hell, but you have to let the pain visit. you have to let it teach you, and you have to let it go. This is the hardest part. Sometimes you will become so close with your illness that letting it go is like destroying the part of yourself that you taught how to survive, but you have to.

You have to be selfish sometimes. You have to learn how to take care of yourself before you can take care of anybody else. You have to learn how to appreciate the little things. You have to pull yourself out of bed at 5:00 in the morning and watch the sun rise. You have to find something you love and let it consume every bit of you. You have to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life and you have to be proud of yourself when you succeed. And most importantly, you have to love yourself in every sense of the word.

You just have to love yourself.