Depression is feeling that lump in the back of your throat anytime the subject is brought up in everyday conversation, but it hits the worst when the word leaves your own lips. Your breath follows astray, and you're left for a second feeling breathless, lifeless, almost like the disease is giving you a taste of the feeling she wants to gift you with for eternity.

Your throat is always strangled by anxiety every time you discuss depression because you feel like you’ve been turned inside out, for every secret and pain on display for all to see, for every witness to watch you wilt.

Such a subject always provokes too powerful of a poignancy for you to process, and you almost always end up breaking down, allowing your weakness to win once again.

It’s jumping into a pool, without taking a breath before because you’re so familiar with sinking to the bottom.

It’s crossing the street and ignoring to look both ways because you’d rather have your mom told you were hit than hanged.

It’s driving recklessly with tears running down your face, your car chasing the sunlight beaming through your windshield — the only sense of warmth you’ve felt in weeks.

It’s sealing shut your eyes as if your lids were a dam, holding back the flood waiting to crash through. You’re not much of a crier, but when it comes to the thoughts that break through all the barriers you put up to prevent them, you can’t help yourself.

It’s your own body attempting to cry for help, a help you can never seem to give, for you always find yourself once again serving as the dam when you’d rather drown instead.

So why not suicide?

Why not just eliminate yourself entirely from such a dooming and worthless life?

It’s simple.

With suicide, you are only ending your breathing, not your pain.

With suicide, you are letting the enemy win, and most importantly, manifest. While you may no longer be able to feel your pain, that doesn’t mean others won’t. The ones that love you most will catch the pain the hardest, which is why most importantly, depression is the refusal to give up, even when you think you have every reason to.