Depression is... a monster in your head that whispers to you all day about how worthless you are. Who tells you that feeling happy would be a betrayal to the pain that lives inside of you. It can be sleepless nights, or days spent in bed. It is deafening silence. It is days of numbness followed by crippling pain. It is waking from nightmares only to find no comfort in your reality. It is a river of sorrow so deep and so wide that it seems like you can never cross it. It is weeks, months, years of drowning as you try to tread water, sputtering and gasping as you barely keep your head above water. 

Anxiety is... like being trapped in a glass box filling with water knowing no matter hard you punch kick and fight that you could never break free. It's like being trapped in one of those "Saw" movies, every day of your life. It can be terrifying, enraging and heartbreaking. It is a battle to do things that seem so ordinary to other people.

Mental illness comes in many forms, my experience is not the same experience as everyone else. There is still so much we don't know about the intricacies of the human mind. We will never have answers with the stigma that surrounds mental illness. I have fought against the monsters in my mind my entire life. There are entire years of my life that I wasted fantasizing about suicide. I am extremely lucky to have had friends and family who supported me through the roughest patches in my life. Who were there for me through the darkness. I owe my life not only to loved ones who never let go of me, even at my worst, but to musicians and artists who's work reached me at the right moment in time leaving me feeling less alone. 

May those of you who judge without knowing never know the pain of the darkness. I hope you stay blissfully ignorant all the days of your life.