With every mental illness there are the parts no one talks about.
Everyone knows about the elephant metaphor,
The commercials where the clouds cover and follow the woman,
When you talk about depression.

But no one talks about how it defeats you.
How more than just your blue skies turning,
And staying,
Gray,
It slowly makes everything that may have once made you happy,
Feel useless.
Worthless.

No one talks about how even when you are happy it still is lingering in the shadows,
Waiting for any opportunity to pounce,
Making you question how you're really feeling.

No one talks about how for those of us so unlucky to be high-functioning,
Most times no one would ever know unless we say something,
And when we shove it away and shove it away it grows and grows and becomes the big
black
monster from the horror movies and crushes us down into submission.

And tells us that we're nothing.

That we are invisible.

That we are wrong.

That we are useless.

Depression isn't an elephant.

It isn't a cloud.

It's a monster that no storybook character or years of therapy or medicine could ever completely defeat,

If at all.