Depression is crippling. It is so much more than just being "negative" or "in a bad mood." Depression is the overwhelming cloud that fills your lungs and makes it hard to breathe. Depression is sleeping all day and then being alone and scared throughout the night. Depression had a hold of my entire being from 8th grade till I left to college and it still manages to creep in. Depression was the root of my other mental health struggles, my actions and how I viewed myself and the world.

The worst and best place to be was in my bedroom alone. I didn't have to fake a smile or exhaust myself to keep up a conversation. I could escape from the life outside of my bedroom door and drown myself in a book and/or music, that is until depression would knock. Depression had no concern of interrupting, it would grip me mid-lyric and wrap me into its sick embrace.

How pathetic are you? So started the internal playlist of insults that destroyed my soul and made me question the value of my life. Every insecurity I had was on repeat and I could not drown it out with my tears. If you were like ____ you wouldn't be going through this. No one wants or cares about you. You couldn't even make ____ stay.

I remember just laying on my bed staring up at the ceiling and crying silently trying to will myself to die. Depression had it's hand around my throat and squeezed, threatening to end everything. It kept me awake through the night and forced me awake tired and broken from the night before.

It did not kill me.

I pushed through and kept putting off the day that I had planned on ending my life further and further into the future until it became a "never."

I lived. I survived. I won.

I will never forget the feeling of my soul breaking and the pain that depression had over me. It reminds me of how far I have come and where I don't want to go back. When I feel it creep back in, it scares me. I have coping methods to help and to keep it at bay, but sometimes that's not enough. I always keep faith that it will pass, if I survived it then I can survive its minor interruptions now.