I don't think people understand how devastating depression really is. It's like a constant sea of sadness. It washes right up to your neck so you feel as if you're going to drown but then suddenly it subsides. I've tried to change it. I've done all the things they suggest, read all the books and blogs and webpages. But nothing fixes brokenness like this. There was a day I asked to go home and said I was just feeling sick, but it wasn't the kind of sickness they were all thinking of.

No one realizes what a heart wrenching pain this brings the recipient of depression. It's not as if we ask for it. It's not like we say "Hey Wish-Granting fairies, bring me a dose of hatred and sadness will ya?" Through the years I just thought I was abnormally awkward, until I grew older and became more aware of what the painful truth actually was.

There’ve been plenty of times that I felt as if I was going crazy. As if the voices in my head were just people talking loudly at a distance, until I realized those people were inside my head, just at the back with faint cries for help. Though all the doctors said it was nothing, I was a firm believer that it meant something more.

Growing up I was happy. Chubby, full of life and wonderment and thrilled to wake up each day to go on the next adventure life had for me. As I progressed on into middle school, the chubby aspect really took a turn for the worse and every day became a battle to wake up and go out into the world. I eventually convinced myself that I was a warrior. A warrior of depression. As silly as it may seem, that was the only thing that got me through it. Pretending I was okay gave me a better reality than expressing that I never really was.

In the blink of an eye, I woke up to the morning of high school. It was the same idea, just a broader spectrum of what pain and bullying was really like for the “real world”. Having already been through three years of the torment and struggling to continue on my warrior journey, it didn’t seem as bad when I was called “fat” and “ugly”. I kept taking the waves as they washed up. As if I were laying right on the shore and the wave came right up to my neck were I wasn’t sure if I’d drown or not, but then in the moment of impact the water returned to the body in which it belonged.

There was a time when I had myself to rock bottom. I thought there’d be no way out so I did the unthinkable. I’ll save you the gory details, but my life was never the same after that. I battled so hard for so long and eventually just let my mind succumb to all the voices that told me I was fat and ugly and not worth anything at all.

It wasn’t until I had this experience that I realized who I was and where I wanted to go with my life. I woke up and went to the bathroom mirror and stared. I stared at the person in the mirror with the bags under their eyes, darkness in their glace and loss of hope in their stance and I knew that person wasn’t me. I knew in that moment that I had forgotten that I was a warrior and had let myself fail. I then stood up straight and put my shoulders back and looked deeper to find my warrior spirit once again. I may have given in to the pain, but I would from that day on join the battle once again.

It's hard for others who don't have depression to truly understand how you feel. No one can exactly pinpoint your struggles or your heartbreak. Hardly anyone can comprehend the impact that each and every detail has on you. But we wake up with every new sunrise, as warriors. We put on a brave face and we venture back out into the very world that had once destroyed us. Not a single person sees what we see, they couldn't even begin to understand what we constantly face so we stride on with the underlying thought of our wave beneath the water.