How would you describe depression?

Depression feels like you're drowning. Like you're constantly struggling to stay above water while the people around you seem perfectly fine. It feels like all of the life, motivation, and energy is drained from you. It makes you feel worthless, like a waste of space. It feels like you're a tree falling in the middle of a forest, and no one chooses to hear you fall, so you don't make a sound.

To me, depression is like a black hole of sadness. Once you get sucked in, it's a long and hard journey to find your way back to who you once were.

Having depression like everyone is in a swimming pool and they are having fun, swimming around and treading water easily but the pool for you is an ocean. It's really overwhelming, not fun being there and it's really hard to tread water cause of waves. And that's a normal day. The worst days are like storms have set in and the wind blows, water whips in your face, and the waves pull you under. Those days its really hard to not just give up and drown but if you don't then it's all you can do to keep your head above water long enough to take a breath before it pulls you under again. When you finally decide you've had enough suffering in silence and need help, you call out to the lifeguard aka your doctor. They are there too help you and keep an eye on you. They can prescribe a life jacket that can make treading water not so hard on normal days and a bit more bearable on the worst days. Sometimes it takes a while to find a floatie that works for you. Sometimes it's a life jacket. Sometimes all you need is a pool noodle or water wings. Sometimes it's none of those things and instead you just need someone to teach you how to swim. That's how it feels to me at least.

Depression is this feeling of sadness that takes over your whole body. Unlike regular sadness, it makes you feel tired/lethargic and lower your feeling of self-worth, which makes it all the more unfortunate to see happen to someone.

Being depressed feels like drowning in your own mind not being able to find the way out. It takes time to see the surface again but it's always there.

Depression for me manifested itself in different stages; mild, moderate and severe. Mild is the constant dull headache, dampening my emotions but more bearable when distracted. Moderate was the soundless weeping, energy sucking leech. It gave me bastardized emotions back, and misplaced them to the extreme. Intrusive, self-distructive and sometimes suicidal thoughts were present during this time. Severe depression took my emotions away. At first it seemed like a relief, a freedom to be free from the emotions that plagued me so much on the journey here. I even thought faking emotions to keep interacting with the world would be enough (hint - it wasn't). The apathy became a double-edged sword, saving me from the pain but damning me from any joy. When you get past the apathy then you struggle on at intellectual level of frustration at your inability to just FEEL like other people can, to have what they have. After a while it had been so long I would even crave the anger, the sadness and the pain over joy or love or humour. Bargaining just to have a glimpse of something over the desert that was once my emotional plane of existence. This was at my darkest time with depression.

For me, depression is extreme form of hopelessness. It could be rooted in sadness, anxiety, etc. When the sadness or anxiety became too overwhelming to deal with, those feelings seemed to overflow into depression, which can feel like a "surrender" of sorts to the negativity.

Depression is a view of yourself , a darkness that is only hidden within you . A temporary illusion.

depression is a really hard feeling, and disease. It can make your life harder, and it can make you have other things, like anxiety, insomnia, self-harming, and more.

I think Depression can be different for different people. Different people deal with it differently. There could be a lot of anger, guilt, extreme sadness, detachment, and maybe some anxiety. It can be scary... but eventually you will make it through. So keep on fighting.