Just depressed? Do you even know what depression feels like? Do you know what it's like to make a list of a thousand ways to die and thinking constantly of the day when you choose one? Do you know what it's like to be the happiest you've ever been one minute but find yourself crying yourself to sleep the next? what about not sleeping at all? Do you know what it's like to have to walk the school hallways like you're dragging weights from your ankles? Do you know how it feels to get worried looks from that one teacher who senses your sadness but won't take the step to reach out to you? God, I wish someone would. Do you know what it's like to be so sad you can't even cry and you just sit there like you're dead? For hours? For days? Longer? Do you know what it's like to not even know the reason why you're feeling like you do? Do you know what it's like to even not be able to change how you feel? Do you think it's easy to "just be happy"? Oh believe me I want to be. Do you know what it's like to be at mercy to a chemical imbalance? To rely on pills just to remain "normal"? Oh please, can I just know what it's like to be normal like everyone else? Do you know what it's like for your brain to be your own worst enemy? Do you know what it's like to pretend that you're ok while this is happening to you? While you're dying on the inside and wishing you could speed up the process? Oh and by the way, no one can even help you. No one can truly understand you, except for yourself. No one. Not even the people you swear you love most of all. You know what? Sometimes you don't even understand yourself. All you know is that any happiness is fleeting and surely will soon be gone. Never-- not in a day, month or year-- can you ever find permanent relief. You feel like there are two different people occupying your body. One loves life and laughs at jokes that aren't even funny and falls in love and reads books and listens to good music and loves the sunshine. The other is a miserable and deeply self loathing being that wants to drown in darkness and spreads like a black sickness through your body wishing to take over it. The other is depression. Sadly, the other too often succeeds in taking over. You are no longer the person that loves life and laughs at jokes that aren't even funny and falls in love and reads books and loves the sunshine.  Jokes don't make you laugh anymore. Books are only a collection of meaningless words. Music is only thin repetitive sound. When the sun is out, you'd prefer to stay inside with the curtains drawn shut. As for loving life, you're not even sure you want to live anymore. You become depression; Depression becomes you. Sometimes you still like to pretend to be that happy person, but that person is barely alive anymore. You still pretend because pretending may just be the only thing keeping you sane. Other times you feel like neither the happy person nor the other are present in you. You're simply empty. You're breathing and you feel a pulse at your wrist, but inside you are nothingness. You are merely half-existing. Sometimes the emptiness hurts more than being completely consumed by the other. It hurts. It's painful. More so than any blade one can take to their own skin. I would give anything just to be able to be happy, to NOT have depression anymore, but I can't. I can't and its not fair. I've come to learn that life isn't fair, but why does this have to be my life? Did some awful omnificent being choose to make me like this? If you aren't depressed, you're **** lucky. Why is it becoming just another trend? Why on earth would you pretend to have such a horrible disorder? Why would you glamorize it with pictures of beautiful, delicate girls with pretty curls in little floral dresses dancing through a field with tears in their eyes with movie quote captions in cursive? Its not pretty. Its ugly; its sad. But, hey, you know exactly what depression is like, don't you?