No one is born depressed. A lot of the time a person won’t know they’re depressed until they have “the thoughts.” I won’t elaborate what “the thoughts” are because I’m pretty sure anyone over the age of 10 knows what I mean.

I myself didn’t realize I was truly depressed until I got “the thoughts.” For years I told myself that I would never stoop so low, but when my past memories came back while I was in my freshman year it was like I was on autopilot. The worst was when I had subconsciously started scratching at my wrist. It was like I was possessed, not to mention when I finally realized what I was doing, where I was, and who it was I had been in front of, I never felt so ashamed as I had been then.

For those of you out there who think depression is just an excessive sadness, you’re wrong. Yes sadness, the uncontrollable flood of tears is and emotion a depressed person can feel, but it’s not the only emotion. Depression is an abundance of storms, earthquakes, tornados threatening to break the small ounce of sanity left in its “caretaker.” Depression can also be the constant feeling of being numb. Not feeling anything, not wanting to do anything, and just letting the days pass by with a person praying for the pain to stop.

Depression can lead people to do irrational things such as self-harm, drugs, alcohol, sex, but at the end of the day you’re just trying to make the pain, sadness, anger, lies go away. I said before how I had tried self-harm, it was just me trying to keep the memories away. That’s the problem, I’m haunted by memories of my past and can’t fix or erase them. “Monsters don’t sleep under your bed, they sleep inside your head” is a quote I read and I believe that. Even though for me, the physical monsters are gone they never left my mind.

Depression should never be taken lightly, for even if you’re on the outside and only see the outside of a person, never think of a smile always being real. For even the brightest smiles hide the most horrible secrets. One wrong action, one wrong word can be the life and death of a person who is looking over the edge of a cliff, wondering if they should jump. No one is born depressed, it’s a sickening black that seeps into ones soul over time. Depression is not sadness. Depression is madness. No one is born depressed.