Depression is a demon. It will take away the people you love and demand pain in your heart. It gives you a heart ache and makes you wish everything would be okay. Why do we have this pain, this hurt? Why can't we just live in happiness. Are we not worth a good life? Has being in high school turned into not showing up to classes because they make you cry? They give you so much stress that you don't want to continue your life. 

Why do we notice when the grades are falling down and call students lazy? Why do we think the attitude change in our kids is disrespectful or that when they became distant they were rude.  Yet we can't notice how the smile on the child fades as they become an adult. How their short sleeves turn into long sleeves to cover the scars they are ashamed of  having. We have stopped noticing that people want to die, until they do. We have made the feeling of sadness and depression become fear of someone finding out. So many people have made this a game of turning people in or getting them in trouble because it is no longer taken seriously, until they lose one of their own. When we lose someone we are close with, we tend to lose a part of ourselves. It is proven that your personality is made up of the personality traits of your six closest friends, so when you no longer have one of them you feel lost. Our friends are hurting and we are looking right past them. We think they are faking or they just want attention, but what will you do when it is real. When you get a 3 a.m. call that your best friend didn't make it. Were they faking it when they took that bottle of pills? Do you still think it is for attention? 

Depression is not a game to be played through high school and be compared to the game of life. Depression is killing your friends, hurting your families, hurting you. Scrolling through social media and finding people reaching out is not needing likes and follows anymore. This is a cry for help they are sending. Poems are being written about young girls referring their body to a canvas. Painting thick red lines down their arms and thighs. Is that what we have thought as a way to heal pain? 

Although depression can run through a family and be passed down, that does not give the all clear for judgement. Think of it as a disease or birth defect. Will you judge someone for something they didn't ask for? Is it your friend's fault that she wants to end her life every second of every day? Does she deserve it? Did she ask for it?  Now look at depression, A mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life, are we still going to judge people for a health disorder given to them without wish? 

Why are we here? Not just these classes or this school, but this place. Living in a place where you never feel like you are truly home. Are we just here to be hurting and wishing for a better life? Is it something I am doing wrong to cause all the pain? Maybe I should just leave. These thoughts run through so many people's minds every day, yet we still manage to think the world is okay. Instead of focusing on alcohol, maybe parents should focus on the mental health of their child. Instead of buying weed to smoke with your son maybe you should figure out why he feels the need to be high. Is it to lift the stress of the world? Maybe to lift the stress of the school work being thrown at them. Or is it from the home life you are throwing at him refusing to see past your bad parenting. We have to start teaching ourselves and our new generations to stop only looking at themselves and help the ones in need. There is not a need for having more generations of people only caring about themselves and no longer caring if the world around them is stable. While at this rate there are no longer many stable people around. 

Through all our lives we are raised to not cry and show our emotions or we are weak. We are told that feeling pain will not make you grow. But, if we continue to make our friends or children hold in their feelings at what point will they be able to let it out? So it levels out to high school. Where you have 10 pages to write one night and haven't started or are a week behind on homework. The stress begins to overwhelm you, making you let out some of the tears until you can not hold any more. So you lock yourself in the bathroom and start crying on the floor. The weakness takes over. Seeing the razor blade on the counters and losing the small amount of strength you have left to get up and grab it. Laying your arm over the sink to wash down the blood that falls. Then what happens, as you have cuts on your wrist and are regretting not wanting to live your life. You stop cutting and break into your tears feeling less and less the more numb you get to the feeling of the cold air on your freshly slit wrist. The sting is a sign of sensation that there is physical pain to cover up the mental hurt. Your mind is running with thoughts. What's your cover up story? Why are your eyes red? How was your day today? Then even after it all you bind all the feelings back into the same pit in your mind and rebuild the pain. Stacking it back up to create a cycle. 

Now I just want to ask one time, Is this all our lives will turn out to be? Worrying about your friends lifes or hiding the pain in your own. An anonymous author once said“ If this is a preview of the rest of my life, then I don't want to live it.” Look at your friends and relate to their feelings, and for once care about someone other than yourself. Depression is a demon.