Depression, I mean. What is it? Chemical imbalances? The brains response to trauma? Unending sadness that needs to be treated with medications and therapy? That makes no sense.

For that to be true that would mean depression only affects the individual on a personal level. But that’s not what happens. One persons depression can spread, like a disease, affecting people around you on a mental, almost subliminal level.

Your depression makes the people in your life feel sad for you, it makes them pity you and it makes them want to help you. It has power over them.

And then, when your depression isn’t magically cured by their efforts, your depressions effect on them changes. They become frustrated with you, they physically can’t be around you anymore. And when your depression starts to negatively impact their lives they push you out of it, your depression has become such a detriment to their own existence that they no longer want anything to do with you. They don’t want your depression to bring them down anymore.

So you are stricken with a disease. The disease spreads to everyone around you and the only way for them to get better is to isolate you. To push you away. To forget you even exist.

Then your depression changes. It makes you angry, bitter, it makes you hate people, it makes you annoyed when they try to help because you know what the end result will be, your depression has proven that to you, they will try, fail, and forget about you. So why bother?

Your depression convinces you that these people are the enemy. That being around them will only make things worse. That your better off being alone. Like a parasite forcing an insect to climb to the treetops to be eaten by a predator, depression forces you to be alone and it makes you think it’s what you want, that it was your idea all along.

Now that you’re alone, free from outside interference, your depression is free to grow unhindered. You’re convinced that people can’t help, professionals can’t help, medications can’t help and that being alone is the best solution.

At this point you don’t want to get better. You’re addicted to it like a drug. You know that if your depression were to be cured you would no longer have an excuse to live the way you do. You wouldn’t have an excuse to avoid chores or social functions, you would have to deal with all of the things your depression has convinced you is just too hard and the thought of that is terrifying. Whether you can admit it or not, you would rather be depressed than have to face those situations.

So you’re alone. People have pushed you away and you’ve pushed away others. You can’t move. You can’t take care of yourself. You just lay there, day after day, waiting to die.

So what the fuck is depression? A mental disorder? A contagious disease? A mind controlling parasite? An addictive drug? Is it conscious? It seems to have a pattern, like it knows what it has to do to grow as strong as possible, specific conditions have to be met for it to survive so does that mean it’s alive? You can’t even tell when someone is depressed because the depression forces them to hide it, like a survival mechanism.

What the hell am I dealing with here?