Dealing with depression is REAL. There isn't a lot of support out there, and I don't think people always understand how much empathy someone needs when they are going through it.
I have spent years without understanding that I had depression, or what that looked like for me. I spent five hours being officially assessed for autism, and at the same time I was also diagnosed with anxiety and depression through autism.
Having that understanding has made me look back at a lot of things differently – not only at myself, but at the experiences that have shaped me. There are things I understand now that I didn't know about back then.
You can gain understanding, make peace with your issues, and still have difficult days. You can think you've broken the cycle and then find yourself somewhere that feels painfully familiar.
You can have one good day and still deal with depression. You can understand your past and still be affected by it. Depression can make you feel isolated and having to convince other people that what you're experiencing is real only makes that isolation worse.
Healing isn't reaching a point where you never struggle again. This is also why people dealing with depression don't need somebody telling them what they should be doing differently. Simply, they need to be reminded that they are understood.
The past cannot be rewritten. The understanding I have today is not the understanding I needed decades ago. When it comes to depression, the most important thing is simply to understand that depression is real.
No one should have to convince anyone of that.
