Personify Your Depression: If my depression were a person... [fill in the blank]

I will get it started since I posted this idea anyway...

I guess for me, my depression is like a hooded person whose features are hidden in darkness and smoke. Someone who is always over my shoulder telling me how bad I am and criticizing what I'm doing. Someone who once convinced me they were a good friend but who I now recognize as a bad influence. Someone who lives in a messy room in my brain. Someone who points out my mistakes and celebrates whenever I'm invalidated or fall short. Someone who constantly belittles me and reuses to have a real conversation with me. Someone who is very manipulative but has a very limited perspecive on things. Someone who is a jerk who will not leave me alone.

It would be like Voldemort.

Mine will be like a demon with 2 horns on his head, evil eyes and always telling me that all the negatives in life is true, and all the positives are lies or insignificant, always whispering in my ears and trying to manipulate my feelings and emotions in a negative way.

@wontsleepwontwake Depression is a dark pit keeping me prisoner in a sunless world where no beauty exits. Depression is a kill joy, the person who sucks the life out of everything. Depression is selfish and mean and doesn't want me to enjoy life, but mostly depression is my teacher; teaching me the strength I have to come back out of the pit, the power I have to experience joy against the odds and the knowledge that despite depression, I am here :-)

To me, would be a small ghost that goes with me everywhere. Sometimes it's really tiny, hidding behind things, randomly blowing cold air at me which I can ignore - at times I can't even feel it, it just lurks around the corners and watches. Others, it's bigger and sits on my shoulder, weighing me down and blowing cold air at me. It picks the negatives and enlarges them, it feeds on negatives - so ignores the positives or tries to make me discard them. And sometimes, it grows so much it can sit on my back and make me fall on the floor, unable to get up. The small ghost is visible but only to me. No one else can see it. And only I can feel the cold air. The cold air is the hopelessness and negative emotions.

I think that my depression is like a shadow that follows me everywhere, and every time I do something that makes me feel bad it's always there laughing at me or looking at me with disappointment. When I'm happy, the shadow is always right behind me to critique me until I recognize it being present. When I feel upset, the shadow encourages self harm and low self esteem related behavior. When I look in the mirror, the shadow is always right there in the reflection with me. When I go to sleep the shadow is right there in my bed whispering all the things I've messed up today, and it never ever stops until finally my body is too sleep deprived to stay awake any longer. The shadow is there first thing when I wake up in the morning, and it tells me all about how terrible the day is going to be and how much I'll disappoint my friends, my family, and myself. The shadow never goes away and it always has something to criticize.

My depression is this person, with a smile on their face, turning into a snarl when I'm not looking, always pretending they want the best for me, being there for me, giving me a shoulder to cry on, almost like a friend supporting me. Except they're nothing but a friend. Because as I cry on their shoulder, the only things to "cheer me up" they say are negative things, bringing me even lower, trying to drive me to harm myself, making me isolate so that they can have me all for themselves, keeping me up at nights. Every day they point out the negative moments, make them look bigger than the good ones, try to make the good ones actually fade away, they make me fear the next ones, telling me it's better to stay in bed, telling me I shouldn't bother anyone, telling me no one wants to hear about me, no one wants to help or be there for me, they make me wake up scared and sweaty during the night to be sure that I don't get enough sleep to fight them properly, they make up crazy thoughts, try to make me believe things that don't make sense at first, encouraging me to take every little detail personally, almost like a friend gossiping. Except they're NOTHING but a friend.

Depression is the man in black throwing stones at me and screaming about my sins. He drags me away from the light I seek. I found another whose heart was pure but depression snuffed the match before the fire could even burn. He is the chains that pin me to my bed for days on end sometimes. Like I'm stuck in this tunnel and all of the xoices around are muffles. Like being under water.

If guess the best way to describe mine is it'd be like a big dark shadow. He's towering, always looming over me like a big cloud. He wears a hateful smirk on his face because he's winning & he knows it. He likes the mind games. He never says a word yet somehow he's always speaking sadness & negativity to me & he tells me to just give up already.

It actually makes me think of a TV character I saw.

Character was introduced as a woman called Lenny. Darkly funny, transgressive, not following conventional expectations of femininity, weirdly appealing. However, as the story went on, Lenny got more dangerous, trying to drive a wedge between the protagonist, saying negative and disturbing things. (Things that often weren't true, but always seemed in the moment like they might be true, and were designed to be as upsetting as possible, put a wedge between the protagonist and other potentially-helpful characters, and drive the protagonist towards decisions that were destructive and damaging.).

In the end Lenny was the monster, a psychic parasite who'd crawled inside the protagonist's head under a series of difference faces, and used lies and distorted memories and manipulation and fears and guilt to isolate and sicken the protagonist, in the hope of destroying him from the inside out. But up until pretty far in, she seemed like she might be friendly, like she might be on his side, like she might be telling him some truths no one else would admit.

So yeah, mine is Lenny.