I share my story to take that tiny baby step of breaking down the stigma attached to depression. Stigma is shame - shame causes silence - silence hurts us all

Summer is here and the sun is out in full force.

I hear people out there laughing, I can hear children playing,
I hear birds singing their beautiful songs of pure, innocent tones... the sounds of joyfulness.

But inside these walls there's quite a different story taking place.

A whole other world.

A solitary journey through darkness, and despair.

Morbid and brutal emotional battles, violently tearing you apart.
A head full of beating and torturing noise that just won't fucking leave you alone...
Complete mental exhaustion.

It consumes you. And it robs you of everything you are.

It mercilessly grabs life away from you, leaving you beaten, wounded and naked.

Sometimes, the mask of all-rightness a depressed soul learns to wear
in order to navigate the world shatters into a million pieces.
And there's no stopping it no matter how hard you try.

Reality can be a bitch sometimes - but that's life.
It is what it is, and all you can do is basically... survive.
Fight with what you have, and hope you will be strong enough to get through it
without losing too much of what you've worked hard to build up.
And not least remind yourself why you are fighting and what you're fighting for.

And why this brutal honesty on a beautiful summer day like this, some may ask?

- Because there's no such thing as 'perfect'.
And we need to learn to acknowledge and accept that fact.

We need to accept reality for what it is.

... I know too well I'm not alone in this.