Depression is a Tiny Monster Hidden Under Your Shirt (TW)

Depression is a tiny monster hidden under your shirt. You’ve got to take it everywhere you go without letting anyone notice. Monster is kicking. Monster is screeching. Monster is crying all over your blouse, which has been rendered transparent from its constant, infernal weeping. If anyone notices, they will find you alarming, so you stop what you’re doing. You go home and wait for the worst to pass. Tomorrow, you will put on a lovely summer dress and dare to go outside. Monster isn’t as committed as you are to remaining unseen, so every time you engage with someone, you’ve got to calm it down and prevent it from breaking into tears.

Monster cries most of the time, though, so your clothes are always wet. There is a barely audible scream escaping from your abdomen. Those who listen hard enough find you a little odd. Those who don’t understand call you weak, so you speak to fewer people and spend more time alone in your bedroom watching Netflix and chilling in a completely platonic, solitary way. That’s not how the rest of the world Netflix and Chills, but Monster doesn’t let you do it their way. It’s just you and Monster talking about how you’ll find someone to love one day when you don’t have to carry him everywhere.

Loneliness would be easier to tolerate if Monster wasn’t always calling you worthless, but he has a hell of a mouth on him. You remind yourself that if you put the monster down, all these problems will disappear and you’ll become patently aware of your own goodness.

But you don’t get to put the monster down. You’ve got to work for this, girl, so you spend your time in doctors’ offices looking for a scalpel sharp enough to detach monster umbilicals from your stomach. This is going to be easy. That’s what you tell yourself in the beginning, but Monster grows twice as large every time it shrinks. Sometimes, it goes away so long you think you’ve rid yourself of it for good, but then you feel your skin growing suspiciously wet.

People tell you it’s okay. They feel compassion for your situation, so you stop hiding your monster from them. It would be so easy if they didn’t feel so infernally terrified of your experience. You learn that sharing Monster means exposing them to all the struggle and the screaming, so you return to hiding in your room.

The more time you spend alone, the bigger Monster grows.
The more time you stay silent, the bigger Monster grows.
The more you hide it
The more you believe it
The more you listen to it, the bigger Monster grows.
Everything Monster wants you to do exists to give it nourishment to grow.

Sometimes you’ve just got to go out wet and screeching. You can only find people with their own monsters if you stop hiding yours. In the process, you will meet people who believe you’re the monster, but they were never your friends in the first place. Sometimes, they’re even monsters themselves.