Depression is wildly misunderstood because of the way it’s misconstrued in the media. Movies, television and social media all romanticize depression, playing off the mental illness as something tragically beautiful that can be solved by an unlikely, star-crossed love story. Furthermore, Tumblr has a tag portraying depression as a painful beauty and essentially is telling people that self-harm is acceptable and beautiful.

As someone who suffers from depression, this trend of romanticizing depression is not only concerning, but very disrespectful. My depression — my mental illness — needs to stop being portrayed as tragically beautiful. It’s not so beautiful when I wake up and force myself to think of one single reason to get out of bed. It’s not so beautiful when I break down over a small problem or spend all day being helplessly sad for no discernible reason. It’s not so beautiful when I decide to go to bed rather than talk to my loved ones because I’m tired of putting on a happy façade.

My depression is not beautiful. It is painful and soul-crushing. It’s exhausting and often I feel hopeless. Most days, I feel like I’ll never be happy again, and I can’t remember what it felt like to be happy. I think back on those days where I felt good and free, and I only feel numb. My eyes are always heavy with tears that I can’t find the energy to cry, and I find it hard to motivate myself to do things I love to do, want to do and need to do. I often feel like I have no one to talk to because I don’t want to burden my friends with my pain. I’m also often conflicted because when I’m feeling depressed, I want to be alone, but I don’t want to be lonely.

Tell me, does that sound beautiful? Does it sound poetic? Is that a story you want to turn into a movie? Because that’s depression. That’s what my mental illness is about. It’s all about hopelessness, helplessness, pain and fear. The story I’m living, the pain I’m going through, will not be solved by a lanky boy finding deep beauty in my pain. This depression will not be fixed by the fierce, undying love of someone I met five days ago. No montage, no poem, no love song will make my pain fade.

The story of my depression isn’t one of a boy loving a depressed girl. It is the story of a depressed girl learning to love herself, learning and trying to overcome her illness, and trying to steal her life back from the clutches of mental illness. This isn’t a story of me finding purpose in someone else, but me trying to remember who I was before the depression, and trying to build someone who will survive the depression.

So many people are out there, fighting their demons — their mental illnesses. The lack of representation of mental illness in media is only making it harder for us to get the help we need, and making it harder for us to recover. To be able to cure mental illness, we first need to fix its representation in the media.