Depression feels like you’re living your life knowing someone in the distance is watching you. You feel it there, but you ignore it and fill the air, time and the space with things. Moments. Distractions. Life happens around you. Babies are born. Flowers are blooming. People are getting jobs. Promotions. People are dying. High school peers are getting married. People are in grad school. You live each day knowing that depression is inching its way towards you more and more. Every sunrise and sunset depression follows you, finds you in a crowd, in a moment, in an instant. Especially when you’re supposed to be happy. When you’re supposed to have meaning and fulfill a purpose. You become so busy, so consumed by life that it’s easy to pretend like you don’t feel depression staring at you. Feel it follow you from room to room. At your work gathering. See it holding up the wall at a holiday party. It’s at family dinner. It’s there for your niece’s birthday. It has a plate at the table for Thanksgiving. Depression when it’s close feels like confrontation you don’t want to deal with, so you find more things to distract yourself with. You go out every weekend. You binge watch hours of Netflix. You volunteer. You visit your friends and your family. You’re smiling and living in people’s faces knowing your whole life is a lie. You feel empty. And worthless. You dread being alone and going to sleep. Because you wake up spooning with that someone in your bed. You didn’t even see it coming. Depression holds you like the big spoon it is. It feels like a weighted blanket that you can’t escape. You didn’t ask for this visit. But alas, there you two are. Depression is like a stranger you feel comfortable with. You give into your thoughts and your fears. You’re vulnerable with him. He knows you. You’ve both been here before. It doesn’t matter how long the visit. Even when he leaves and is away, there’s always a part of him with you. Depression feels like having no motivation to do the things you need to do and want to do. It feels like anger because you want to be productive, but you can’t make yourself do anything. It’s doing the bare minimum everyday. Or it’s doing absolutely nothing. Depression feels like laziness and uneasiness at the same time. It’s frying for yourself. Crying for no reason at all. It’s finding reasons not to leave the house. Depression makes everything a hassle. Putting on pants. Leaving the house. Combing your hair. Depression looks like a messy room with piles of clothes, books, papers, and bags making a path to your bed. Depression looks like a clean room, except your guilt and hatred for yourself smeared all over the walls. But then one day when you’re finally able to get up, leave the bed, you'll feel like you can be productive. You’re ready to leave the house again. You open the door to the whole wide world in front of you, and what do you know, it’s anxiety.