Understand it, then judge.

Because you don't know every bit about it. 

Yes, I am going to complain. 

Yes, I am going to get religious.

Yes, I am going to get extremely personal. 

You are welcome to stop reading this or hang around for a while.

I have suffered from depression and anxiety my entire life.

I was 7 first time suicide crossed my mind.

I have always hid this from everyone.

Until recently.

I have opened up about it.

It is hard but I feel like the things I say other people need to hear.
I’m sick and tired of pointless anxiety attacks over stupid things, and finding happiness hard to obtain.

I hate it.
So much.
Everyone deserves to be happy. 
That is why God put us here.

It started to get really bad about 10th grade.

I missed too much school.

I literally couldn't force myself out of bed.

I would go days without leaving my room. 
Some of the days I would go to school and end up sitting in my car the entire day trying to convince myself to go in,

I almost got kicked out of High School.

18  hours of sleep everyday.

I would have up to ten panic attacks everyday.

Sometimes, they would be so bad I would pass out.

I have been to every kind of mental health doctor.

I have been on every type of depression or anxiety pill out there.

IT SUCKS.

I'm really tired of being misunderstood.

People think that people with anxiety or depression choose to be that way for attention.
But if I could choose, I wouldn’t put this on anyone.

There are a few things that are holding me somewhat together.
My faith and the few true friends that I have.
I try to avoid the subject with most of my friends because I get looked at as weak and a complete mess.
Ha.
So, that is why God is there.
God won't leave me so, I won't leave him.
As my faith and testimony grow stronger, so will my mind and my body.
I've got this.

Don't judge. Please.

It turns fun people into zombies.

It affects the ability to think clearly and to feel anything,

It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, and no point in anything outside of bed.

You alienate your friends because you can't comfort yourself socially.

You live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone get out of bed.

You become pathetic and you know it.

And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge.

You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better.

So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and isolation.

If you have never been depression, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier.

If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you.

If depression has taken root in you and your loved ones, every blessing, to you too.

No one chooses it.

No one deserves it. 

It runs in families, it ruins families.

It is real.

Just because you have never had it doesn't make it imaginary.

Compassion is also real.

And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remeber your compassion for the rest of their lives as a for greater than their depression.

Have a heart.

There is definitely a reason why I want to be a therapist.

  “Admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming it.”

Thanks for reading. CHEERS!