What I Want People Who Ask What My Depression Feels Like to Know

Some people ask me: “What does depression feel like?”

The truth is, I can’t speak for everyone, but what I do know is it is something I have never felt before and that cliché saying about “you’ll never understand until you live it,” well, it’s kinda true.

This is what my depression feels like.

Depression, more than sadness, is emptiness. It’s a feeling of despair. It’s a feeling of “there is no light at the end of this tunnel.”

Depression is nonconformity — with your body, with your accomplishments, with your life. It’s not having the ability to feel proud or beautiful, even though rationally those descriptions might be true.

Depression is scars. If they’re physical, it’s blood and cuts. But what’s worse are the non-physical ones — the cuts that hurt deep down. Because yes, you might drown your pain by feeling other pain,  but that feeling of not being able to love yourself or others, that pain is more pain than anyone should bear.

Depression is treatment. It’s feeling like a zombie, losing or gaining your appetite, losing your memory, trembling hands, writing through logs and journals, and talking, and talking and talking. Even though you might not want to talk. Even though you wish your lips were sewed together so you could be silent.

Depression is dissociation. Nobody can hurt you if you’re not present in your body right?

It’s having no plans for the future because your most valued plan is how to find a way to not even have a future.

Depression is a little voice inside your head that tells you: “No matter what you do, things won’t get better.” But you know what little voice? Eventually, they do.

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