No one understands.

At least that's how it feels. Even people who claim to have depression (a "cool" thing to have, it seems) don't really seem to get it and it certainly doesn't help that they post anything mentioning it to Facebook for attention - generally more opinions about depression from people who aren't depressed.

I'm here to tell you, it's not as simple as altitude or oxygen. It's not as simple as divorced parents or "a hard childhood". It's just not. With those reasons, even though some of them are applicable to most people with depression, it just minimalizes depression. Everytime someone blames one thing or another, it's just minimalizing. Depression is as complex as it is mysterious. It's truly disabling the deeper it gets. I'm just frustrated with fighting for the legitimacy of this illness when so many people don't understand it.

It's worse than PKD. At least with that, no one knows enough about it to judge the people who have it. But depression? Too many people claim to have it and then go on to complain about every small thing, beg for attention for it, and spread their opinions and misinformation. It really makes us look bad.

I'm not ungrateful. I'm not a pessimist. Most of my days aren't "bad" despite my problems. I try to always have a good attitude (it helps that I'm home 99% of the time). My point is that we're not all like the stereotype. In fact, the people I know (who probably have a deeper depression than me because they've attempted suicide) look happy. They don't bully anyone and they don't complain. Ever. Which is better than me.

I don't know. I feel like I'm patronizing everyone's struggles right now. I'm not trying to do that, I just mean to illustrate that no one understands. Despite the fact that it's absolutely sabotaging my life and the lives of others, some people don't even believe in depression and that people can just "pull themselves out of it". For this, I totally blame people who use self-diagnosed depression as a tool for attention.