Look, I’m sure you’ve heard this part before
But I need to tell you a story.
It’s a story we all know too well,
And yet, we can’t seem to understand enough.

See, depression—
It isn’t a choice.
It isn’t a word to label the sorrow we
Wake with one morning
And forget about as the day progresses
Because there are better things to do with ourselves
Than to mope.
Than to cry.
Than to hold the shattered pieces of a cold heart in our two sweaty, cold hands.
See, it doesn’t work like that.

Depression—
It’s a sickness, a disease.
Like a parasite, it feeds
On your body, on your mind
Eats up your joy, leaves rotting black behind.
And it won’t go away.
And the heart shaped hole in the hole filled vessel for the parasitic creature,
She tries to fill it with locked doors and
Unanswered phones and
Little red lines on her drained skin, while
They try to fill it with pills she can’t name
And questions she can’t answer
So the spiral spirals faster and faster.

That’s when he realizes just how delicate life truly is
Cut a bit too deep, right.
Take a bit too much, sure.
But fifteen years old and wondering
If the consequences are really worth
The guilt nailed to his back
And the hole filled with plastic
And elastic and Elmer’s glue seeping
From a spider web of cracks?
Can I tell you a secret?
It is.

That’s what she thought with a knife clenched in her two sweaty, cold hands.
That’s what he was so certain of, swallowing three months prescription, wishing he could still cry.

The Actual Truth in fact is this:
It was the desperation to get away from that ‘thing’ feasting in their heads.
They weren’t trying to kill themselves
Even if that’s what they believed too.
In actuality, they were only trying to squash an insect.
Don’t call them selfish, please don’t you dare.
Because it’s not, nor was it ever their fault.
Depression isn’t a choice,
It’s a Parasite.