To be honest, I would have never thought that something so little talked about could affect such a large part of my day to day life. It took me years to put the pieces together and come to the realization that I am depression. I may have never been clinically diagnosed, but that is because that is what scares me the most. In one of my worst years, I attended the GVSU school counseling for a few sessions because I felt as though I was falling down a deep well that would be impossible to get out of. It was not a bad experience, and I was told to return after Thanksgiving Break to schedule another therapy session (because she was "worried about me" in 2018, yet here I am in February of 2020, not even remembering what my therapist looked like. This has been the closest I have ever been to reaching out and getting help. My parents simply do not believe in depression, as I do not have a "reason" to be depressed. Which is true... and what makes it oh so worse. There is nothing that I can do to attempt to "fix" the way that I feel every. single. day. At this point, it still hits in waves. Some days I have literally no energy or will to get out of bed, so I will sleep for 20+ hours on and off. And some days I'm energetic and productive. Those don't come often, but boy is it a breath of fresh air. On those days, I always catching myself wondering if this is how people feel every day. And if this is how easy life would be, when you have energy to actually do things that living people do, because I cannot think of my past when I didn't feel like this.
Depression has affected friendships, destroyed relationships, my relationship with my family, my grades, and just about every thing good in life. It may seem overexaggerated, but it is the truth when I actually sit down and think about it. And yet, I still cannot grow the guts to open up to my family about it to get help. So until then, I will let the daily gamble of which way the switch will be for the day every time I wake up and will allow it to cloud my life like a cold and wet weather cloud that you can't run away from if it chooses to do so.