Highs and lows

Life is built up by highs and lows. Some people are lucky enough to go through life, experiencing only the small lows, while the highs just keep coming. Sadly, not everyone is that lucky. There are people in the world, experiencing all kinds of great sadness. Some people are starving, have lost their parents, their home, the most basic things, that a lot of us take for granted. These are the people we like to remind ourselves about, when we're feeling bad about not having enough money to buy a new car, or that beautiful dress we've wanted for so long. The thing is, there are also a lot of other kinds of lows, that don't get the same attention. A lot of other ways to hurt, that most people don't take as serious. One of them is depression. People with a depression are going through a whole different kind of struggle, fighting to stay in control of their life and their mind. Depression is a disease that should be taken more seriously, and I don't understand why it isn't. Depression can break a person, turn their whole world against them. Make them feel so useless and hopeless that even getting out of bed seems impossible. Depression has nothing to do with weakness. It's not something people choose to have, not something they'd put upon themselves to get other people to feel bad for them. It's not a choice. Just like hunger isn't a choice. And because most of the world doesn't take depression seriously, people with depression tend to do the same. This can be dangerous. I started out like this, not taking my depression seriously. What it ended up causing, was a lot of self harm. Because other people didn't see it as anything serious, I just thought of myself as weak and a coward, not being able to go through one single day without my constant lows. I started beating myself up over every single thing I did wrong. Now that I've started taking it seriously, I see how much harm it's done to me, back when I didn't. I'm not writing this to make people feel bad for me. I'm writing this as a reminder to anyone out there going through the same or similar thing as me. Never underestimate the power a depression can have. Even when other people tell you it's not serious, take it serious. If you don't, you'll never get through it. If you don't start taking yourself serious, it's not possible to fight it. Depression is a disease. Treat is as one.

/End of ramble.