Lazy. Selfish. Ungrateful. Everyone gets sad. Just get over it.

     I stare out at the cold water and see the waves crashing against the jagged rocks. The tide gives them no air–rising, then receding, rising, then receding. As I watch the rocks suffocate, it suddenly becomes painstakingly obvious why my own lungs have begun to struggle. I witness a painful and vicious cycle–a painful and vicious reminder of myself.

     I am broken glass in an old, abandoned home. Visitors arrive few and far between, but each leaves with shards of indifference buried deep in their fingertips, fatigued from trying to fix something that has been broken for far too long. I fall back apart each time another person deserts me, each time they decide that the house needs too much repairing to be worth the buy. I crack in new ways each time, left to lie in pieces on those old floorboards that have become all too familiar with my embrace. My past bangs at the door, more furiously the longer I refuse to let it in.  The door breaks, and it engulfs me–a wave of emotion, failed relationships, and guilt. I sit alone with my history, counting the rings on my trunk. My thoughts cascade like overpacked luggage: overflowing, yet somehow never enough. I fall short, yet I bubble to the brim. My mind clogs; my chest remains barren.

     But I am happy. Yes, of course. I ate my favorite ice cream today. I watched the sunrise. I have a house, a good education, food on the table, people who love me. However, happiness has no fidelity. Something has escaped my grasp: joy. That old, familiar warmth that used to flood my soul, that motivated me to love, to change, and to try has disappeared. No, I feel not unhappy, but stagnant. A crude hopelessness closely accompanies this stagnancy, bringing the apathy that fuels every part of me. People love to brush off depression as a state of mind, as a feeling of sadness found in those lazy, ungrateful people who are simply unwilling to change their outlook. This sends a hurtful, demeaning, and invalidating message that trickles through the mind–a false diagnosis and a false prescription. Depression exists, rather, as a way of life–a sickness, and a seductive one at that. It draws closer bit by bit, promising happiness and a carefree life. It never fails to keep such promises. These bits of happiness disappear within a split second to the very farthest corners of one’s mind where they pile on top of one another, waiting for a ribbon of joy to tie them together into one unique feeling, thought, or concept–but if that ribbon never appears, another must replace it. Depression sneaks in, a stealthy shadow, undetected by any warning system, to fill the place where joy has disappeared, where the heart has always felt unfulfilled. It ties all of that happiness together with a perfect little bow, so tightly knotted that the happiness stays there, trapped and static.

     “Stagnation is death. If you don’t change, you die. It’s that simple. It’s that scary.” -Leonard Sweet

     Therein lies the problem: hopelessness, the terrifying yet numbing notion that life has no point. A thick fog shrouds my spirit. It clouds my vision, desensitizing me to the outside world. It seizes my motivation, my passion, and my very life. Yet this cloud forms from my own happiness–false fleeting smiles over the years. The fog thickens into a heavy substance that surrounds and suffocates. And I would bear this weight happily–I would accept my fate, giving in to the relieving apathy that my cloud brings, if it weren’t for what it still lets me see. I look around, and I can barely glimpse the outside world. I watch people moving about freely with joy in their hearts and passion in their souls. In my right mind, I recognize that as I envy these people, I envy them for their masks–masks that hide their struggles. When the cloud descends upon me, their struggles seem to disappear. I only see people who have something that I do not. I am trapped, yet they move about easily, freely, always energized. This puzzles and hurts me; at times I feel as if I deserve to be smothered by this cloud. When others approach me (the few that breach my misty haven) they often further validate this idea, shouting what they deem helpful advice into my ear–words that do nothing but push me deeper into the cloud.

     Why do we treat mental illness differently than any other illness? Do we tell someone with cancer that they simply need to change their frame of mind? Do we shame those with food poisoning for staying in bed all day? These masked criticisms sound absurd, but I hear them all too often. I feel misunderstood by those who have never cared enough to dig deeply, to pick up my broken shards one by one instead of fumbling to fix them all at once. If only one person would take the time to learn, to understand how I wrestle with the smallest of tasks, how I struggle to continue breathing–maybe they could reach into my cloud and begin to gently pull me up and out.

     Depression is not unhappiness, but rather the inability to change, to move, to even attempt getting “better.” I only long for someone to treat me gently, to respect my very real feelings, and to understand that sadness does not even scratch the surface. I only need someone to look me in the eye and say,

     “I know how hard you try. You make me proud.”