What does depression feel like?
It feels like you're walking in public, wanting to scream at the top of your lungs, but people will think you're crazy (meanwhile you know you are). So you hold it in, and the tension builds and builds until you feel like you're about to explode.
It feels like even when there are a million reasons to stay, there's a few that are screaming for you to go.
It feels like you don't even know who you are. Are you really who you were a year ago? A week ago? Yesterday? What does having an identity feel like? Who the fuck are you?
It feels like... nothing, and everything, all at once. It's butterflies in the stomach, static in the mind. It's screaming from the inside and the greatest silence in one. You don't know up from down anymore.
It feels like the devil is whispering in your ear. You're worthless. Hopeless. Why are you even here? What's the point? When will it get better? All your insecurities are in the spotlight. And they're all true.
It feels like the calm before the storm. Even when you're happy, you know it's soon to be taken away from you. You don't deserve happiness. You deserve pain, and you thrive on it.
You want to rip yourself open, free all the demons inside you before they destroy you first. You don't want to live the rest of your life like this, but there is no alternative.
But if you let yourself go into the unknown, you'll be judged. Suicide is selfish. Suicide is cowardly. Suicide is shameful.
But they just don't understand.
Selfish is everyone else wanting to keep me here in this eternal pain. Selfish is watching me suffer without lifting a finger to help. Selfish is ignoring the warning signs because you think they won't do it; they're just attention whores. You say I'm selfish? Many of my friends are dead, but the pain felt from depression is far greater than the grievance of a fallen friend. It's not something that can be comforted. It's not something that heals with time.
Cowardly? Fine. I'll take that. I'd rather die a coward than live a tortured soul. But I'm afraid. What is there after life? Probably nothing. So what happens to my soul? Death is scary for everyone, but for a person with depression, life is scarier. So yeah, I'm a fucking coward. But that's my problem, not yours.
Shameful? I'm sorry I disgraced your name with my shameful exit. But you're the shameful one. You watched it happen. You made empty promises. You abandoned me. You judged. Only God can judge, right?

That's what depression feels like.