*DEPRESSION IS REAL.*



Unmanaged expectations lead to anxiety, unmanaged anxiety lead to stress, unmanaged stress leads to depression, unmanaged depression can easily lead to 'suicide.' Depression is real.

It is so difficult to describe depression to someone who has never been there because it is not just about sadness.

Having depression is like being scared and courageous at the same time. It's wanting friends and hating to socialise. It's wanting to be alone and hating loneliness. It's the fear of failure but lack of courage to be productive.

Depression is when a student gets an A plain to go to the university with expectations of getting a good job as soon as they clear campus only to tarmack. Depression is when someone promised you a job only to vanish in thin air. Depression is when you only have 50 shillings in the pocket yet you have a family to feed. Depression is when you loose people you were depending on. Depression is when every family member hates you. Real depression is when you don't have money, you don't have a job and you don't have friends.

University student going to class and to bed without a single meal. The parents in the village are happy their child is in the university. The child needs money to type and print some work. Fuliza limit has been reached and they can not borrow anymore. When they call home, 'kumekauka' is the answer. The child feels abandoned and lost. But when he dies they buy coffin worth over 30,000 shillings yet when he needed 1,000 to save his life nobody helped.

A human being can survive almost anything as long as they see the end of sight but depression is so insidious and compounds daily that its impossible to ever see the end.

Depression is feeling like you lost something but having no clue when or where you last had it and then one day you realise what you actually lost is you. Depression is a wound that never shows up on the body but hurts more than anything that bleeds.

'I am fine,' is the biggest lie in the 21st century. People want to talk about it, to scream, to yell, to shout about it. But at the end they whisper, 'I am fine.' Its not the amount of tears that measure the pain of depression, its the smile we fake.

Ask for help, talk it out no matter how bad it looks, share your problems to people you trust. Depression affects more introverts than extroverts. Go to the gym if you can, try some morning and evening runs if you can, join a society if you can, avoid toxic addictions, watch good staff, pray with your family, go for outings with your family once in a while, be a leader, talk to strangers oftenly, look for a therapist and above all believe in God.