The other day I went to a discussion session where the topic was depression and anxiety. I have lived with anxiety for several years now and was just recently diagnosed with depression. It has definitely shaped my life in extraordinary ways.

Living with anxiety and depression can be hard at times. Depression and anxiety are different illnesses, but they overlap quite frequently.

At this discussion session, the person who led the discussion stated that individuals with depression and anxiety live in fear and are always afraid.

The entire discussion was based on shining a light on these mental illnesses, but in reality, no one truly learned anything. I went because I wanted something that would help and someone who would understand and stand up for all of these individuals who live with this fight every day. Instead, I felt torn apart and belittled. As if because of my mental illness I had simply given up. It’s not even remotely close. I may only deal with anxiety and be borderline depressed, but I make it through the day.

For those of you who don’t live with monsters in your head telling you that you aren’t good enough or that you can’t do something, you don’t know how rewarding it is to make it through one day being able to fight off those bad thoughts.

But it is within our society, nowadays, to romanticize everything.

My friend said she was depressed the other day.

She’s taking to a boy and he hadn’t texted her back for five hours. Five hours, guys. There's a difference between being upset because of someone and being upset because your brain functions differently.

Statements like these go a long way when you're talking to someone who is actually dealing with these illnesses.

Mental illnesses don’t appear when convenient and then disappear. But many people seem to be under the impression that these illnesses can simply be cured with medicine as if it were the common cold.

How can you fix what is in charge of your entire existence? The brain is not interested in what you want, it is designed to stay alive and bring out functions the way it perceives to be the best way. People with mental illnesses are wired differently, so what seems like nothing to you could be their world. Remember that.

So here is an open letter to those of you who continuously romanticize mental illness.

I just wish we would all just stop romanticizing pain and discomfort, mental illness and depression. There is all this speculation about why these teenagers are killing themselves when there are more people dying of cancer, but no one stops to discourage the romanticism of it all. There is nothing admirable or romantic about someone cutting themselves because they have depression or anxiety. It's degrading to all of these people who seriously are affected by mental illnesses.

Why shine a light on negativity and proclaim it to be good? Mental illness is not something easily described. Depression can be many things: it is the absence of feelings; it is the overwhelmingly heavy load of emotion.

There are all of these photographs depicting depression and other mental illnesses as carefully crafted cigarette boxes and girls wearing flower crowns with artfully running mascara. Depression is not something to romanticize into pretty little hand painted portraits that we admire for their beauty. Mental illnesses have many manifestations, but carefully placed photographs and incorrectly translated song lyrics are not it.

So let's stop creating this idea that mental illnesses should be promoted because that's just as dangerous, if not more, as not accepting mental illness.

This idea of eternal youth is preposterous and romanticizing something as serious as mental illness is beyond nonsensical. Making something socially acceptable doesn't mean it's right or should be done.