I lead a life anyone could be lucky to have. I have an amazing, supportive family. A great relationship and some pretty amazing friends. I am going to college for the career of my dreams, and I have received opportunities that I truly haven't deserved. However, behind closed doors to this perfect life, my depression and anxiety makes it almost impossible to enjoy any of these things. And a lot of people in today's world believe that the struggles I face daily are not reality, but I am here to tell you they are. Whether it's ignorance, or just a lack of knowing, I have written this article to shed light on what really happens in the day of someone with major depression and anxiety.

.

.

.

Have you ever been to the beach and you are diving under waves with your friends, but you come up a minute too late or too early and the wave drowns you and you struggle to gasp for air until you can regain your bearings? That is just a sliver of what it is like to live with depression and anxiety.

So many people underestimate the diseases, as it is very common nowadays for social media to glamorize them and make it "cool" to have one. However, as someone who suffers from major depression and anxiety, I can assure you nothing about this is glamourous.

The reality of it all is that depression sucks, and you can be at the BEST place you've ever been in your life, and still not be able to find happiness within yourself. To make this easier to understand, I will below outline what a bad day (keep in mind it gets much worse than what I'm explaining) feels like to someone suffering from these things.

1.Waking up: You wake up and are ready to start your day! Except you're not. Your face is swollen and red from the anxiety attack you had before going to bed because you're sick of being sad and can't do anything about it. Your head is pounding because you've drained your tear ducts, and your body is so heavy you're not sure you can lift it. And when I say that your body is heavy, I mean it's like there is 200 pounds of pressure holding you down and it takes everything within your body to even lift your head. And here is where you make the decision of getting up, or cancelling all plans again and making up an excuse to miss yet another thing because you just cant' do it.

2.Getting up: This is it, you've gotten up. You did better than yesterday, be proud of yourself. Except you can't be proud, because there is so many things wrong with you that you cannot fix, and you should be getting out of bed and stop being such a piece of shit. This is not an accomplishment, this is what you SHOULD be doing. WHY can't you just be a normal human being and be excited to do the things you use to enjoy? WHY can't you just for once look in the mirror and appreciate what you see. You've been losing weight! That's great, except it's not, because you've lost it due to lack of eating and oversleeping. You have less acne! Awesome, but you still have one pimple and everyone is going to point that out over the clear skin.

3.Time for a shower: You get into the shower and really try to avoid the mirror because you're unhappy with what you've become. And in some cases, you really just don't want to see the scars from your failed attempts at happiness. You turn on the shower to the hottest setting it has, because the burning sensation is better than feeling nothing at all. Okay, its time to wash your hair. But your body is so weak you can't stand, so you sit on the floor of your shower attempting to clean your body, but through the tears you can't really see anything. You have music playing in the background so if someone were to walk by, they couldn't hear your muffled sobs. Okay, its been about twenty minutes, and your skin is so red from the heat there is nothing left to burn, time to get dressed.

4.Getting dressed: You quickly throw on clothes, sometimes not even caring if they match. But then again, if they don't match, you're going to draw attention to yourself and people are going to notice that you are slipping and you cannot let people know you're getting bad again. So you put on a matching outfit, and along with that, the smile you wear so that nobody knows just how much you are hurting.

5.The work/school day: All throughout the day you wish to go to bed and not socialize. You hope with everything in you that the act you've been working on for so many years does not fail you today and nobody asks you if you're okay. Because that one question will wreck the entire act as it will break you down into tears. You avoid all interactions and just do what you have to, but you listen into conversations, because what if you did something wrong? You act like you are the happiest person, but really your mind is running through about 20 different scenarios of things that could go wrong at every single moment of the day. You forgot to brush your hair, so you just throw it up in a bun because you can't afford to look the way you feel.

6.Getting home: Instead of doing tasks that need done, you turn on your favorite "sad song" playlist and collapse on the floor crying. But you make sure you have the volume up, because you'd be weak and "attention-seeking" if anyone caught you. Instead of taking a shower, or even changing clothes, you go to bed, and a lot of the days, you pray that you won't wake up the next day and have to repeat the same old routine.

The routine above is a normal thing for those of us suffering with depression and anxiety. They are NOT fake diseases. I am NOT making this post for the pity, or the attention, or the hate. I am making it because half the time people don't recognize the true pain that comes with these illnesses. Because we hide them so that we don't get told we are pathetic or just looking for sympathy. Because depression is so real, and so BRUTAL, that this reality needs to be shared. Don't degrade someone because they take medications to deal with this, because the pain goes much deeper than the physical scars they've hidden from you on their body. Don't degrade them because they tend to oversleep or need reassurance from you, because that's only going to spiral them downward more. Most importantly though, be there. I cannot stress enough how many times I've been one person away from ending my own life. But that ONE person who understood and sat in silence with me while it wasn't safe for me to be alone, SAVED me. BE that person, EDUCATE yourself, and interrupt the wave that crashes down suffocating us.