Smile

Why is it that whenever I tell people  that I have depression, the first thing that they say is “ but you don’t look depressed”. And every time I just pretend that what they said is okay, but what they don’t know is that every time I open up to someone and they shoot me down like that it chips away at a bit of my soul. Every time i’m told to cheer up 

or try to laugh a bit 

or smile,  as if just the act of smiling was gonna cheer me up, 

It's like they're telling me that what i’m feeling isn’t real, that what i’m feeling is superficial enough that I can just smile and it will all go away. 

Well guess what, one smile won’t counteract 2 years of depression. 

One smile won’t stop the fact that I struggle every day just to wake up and get out of bed. 

One smile won’t stop the fact that every day I have a million tiny voices in the back of my head telling me that i’m not good enough, that everything bad that happens in my life is all my fault, that I don’t deserve to live.

One smile won’t stop the fact that every time someone tells me that my depression isn’t real, or that i’m just faking it for attention, another voice is added to the reservoir of negative thoughts in the back of my mind that gets louder and louder with each passing second.

And another thing people say to me is that it can’t be that bad, or that it could be worse. But what they don’t get is that maybe my life could be worse but depression isn’t about how bad things are - it’s about how things feel for you at that moment and at the moment things feel pretty shit. 

Just because I pretend that everything's fine doesn’t mean that it actually is. And telling me that things could be worse isn’t helping because it’s as if you're dismissing the fact my pain is REAL.

And  don’t tell me that it’s all in my head or  I'm just imagining things as if I choose to have depression, or I'm making it up. That’s the same as telling someone that they chose to be beaten up, except for me my the voices and all of my negative thoughts are the ones that are attacking me, and telling me to smile, to cheer up, or that i’m just imagining something that to me is so real that it’s almost as if I physically have someone right next to me all day, every day whispering stuff into my ear, is not helping. It’s not, if anything it’s making it worse. 

Now you may be asking what my goal for this is, well let me be clear.

If someone tells you that they are sad or depressed or that they self harm, don’t think you know what to say, in fact don’t say anything at all, just listen. Let them open up and get what they’re feeling off their chest. Because like sushil sing said, I don’t want you to help me, I want you to stand by my side as I help myself.

Thank you