Scars Aren't Optional

There are a lot of kids nowadays with depression. Or, at least that's what they want you to think. To them depression is this sad little pet that walks beside you as you longingly look ahead, hair flowing with the wind catching on the new black hoodie you bought. Black isn't your colour but it looks depressing and fits the look. Oh! Or it's the cute manga girls you see on Instagram with quotes beside them saying, "On the outside I look sweet and happy, but the inside is a battlefield." Boo. Fucking. Hoo.

It's called romanticism. In simpler words it's putting a romantic twist on your pathetic sadness. Just like in the movies. In those kids minds there will be a hero in the end. If they slice up their wrist there will be a spontaneous girlfriend or boyfriend on the way to kiss it and say the lie of the century, "It'll be okay." When you're bent over the toilet spewing your fucking guts out your man will sit there holding your hair back whispering encouraging things into your ear. "It'll be okay." At school when you refuse to eat, shyly but sweetly saying you're not hungry, hoping the girl across the table notices and talks to you. "It'll be okay." Because in your fucked up little world, that's how things work.

But back in reality fun land, things are REAL. Hence REAL-ity. In your fantasy things work out in the end? With the stereotypical rides into the sunset? Things don't work out. And the only sunset you're riding into is the one leading to your demise. The illusion you get after OD'ing on the last of the Tylenol tablets. Another thing that happens in fun land is when you slice up your arms, your parents find you bleeding out in the bathroom and send you into a hospital. In there you get to kick back in white coloured rooms with your ass sticking out your robe. Periodically you'll have people coming in checking on you, asking you "Why." You don't know the answer. When your puking out dinner the only person to hold your hair back is yourself as you whisper encouraging things. "You're gonna be beautiful." At school when you walk right past the lunch line to sit across a girl who then walks away. She has no interest in a guy who looks like a ghost, dark eyes and pale as hell.

It's not some petty love story. It's not some hardship that goes with your fucking OTP on tumblr. This is real. This is sad and hard and life threatening. Depression isn't something to be taken lightly. Ending something that could've been good in this damn fucking world isn't romantic. It's sick and upsetting. I don't know who sucked you into the hole you got into where unicorns happen to be the world animal, but I'm sorry for you. And another thing, next time you see something on social media that says "scars are optional", know that they aren't. There are physical and mental scars that go with depression. Scars aren't optional.