I’ve always been an open person. If you were to ask, I would willingly tell you that I have spent the past few years dealing with depression and generalized anxiety. Not everybody else is as easy going. It’s understandable, as mental health isn’t viewed the same way physical health is, and some people won’t be as accepting as they should. This is why mental health awareness continues to be important. The more people talk about it, the easier it will get (hopefully). I have depression, and this is what it’s like for me:

1. I always know I’ll eventually be okay again.
2. That doesn’t mean I’ll feel like getting out of bed. Or showering. Or talking. Sometimes I’ll go a couple days without reaching out to people. It’s not meant to worry anyone. I’m just waiting out the bad days and I like to do that alone.
3. It also doesn’t mean I feel like myself. Depression has a funny way of taking over every part of my life. While I know it’s not true, I’ll still feel like I’m worthless, I’ll feel like I don’t matter. It feels like I’m in a world that isn’t mine.
4. Sometimes I won’t feel anything at all. I’m breathing, I’m existing...but I’m not alive.
5. It sucks when I see or hear people making jokes about killing themselves. It really does. I don’t know when it started to become a funny thing to say, and I wish people would realize it isn’t.
6. Casually switching out the words “sad” and “depressed” like they are interchangeable is also something I wish people wouldn’t do. Depression shouldn’t be generalized as just another feeling. Because sometimes depression is the complete opposite. Sometimes it means not feeling anything at all. Everyone gets sad. Not everyone gets depressed. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 6.9% of adults have had a major depressive episode within the past year. Please don’t confuse that with sadness. And if you do think you’re depressed, please go to a doctor so you can get diagnosed and get treatment.
7. Just because people have the same mental disorder does not mean they’ll experience them the same way. There could be someone who has depression or anxiety reading this right now and completely disagreeing with everything I say. This is just my perception of it.

It’s a hard topic to bring up, it’s hard to talk about and to describe. Especially knowing it’s out there for everyone to read and know about. But that’s the whole point isn’t it? I wouldn’t be this scared to tell people about a physical disability. I’m not going to stop talking about mental illness until it’s looked at the same way physical illness is.