Let’s skip the small talk and get right to the topic at hand. Mental Health remains a touchy subject stigmatized as a weakness and not as a disease. ____ I really know depression. I know coming outside when the sun is dark. I know sleeping in the bathtub when there’s no water running and just looking at the ceiling thinking. My mind is like a Rubik’s cube. I’m telling myself that it’s worse than what it really is. I’m telling myself the whole time, Hey Charles, you can get out of this! Charles, you know better. You know how to snap out of this. You’ve been through too much. Work, school, home doesn’t matter where I go depression is with you. _____ For me, sometimes depression is a season like it’s rainy and cold. But it’s just me being honest. I don’t feel like everybody is honest. That’s the vulnerability I choose to have. I embrace it. Depression tells me I suck but I reply back I’m not here because I fell down, I’m here because I got up. I don’t want any attention but I write because it’s therapeutic. Picture me fighting with myself or even worse when I was drinking. It hurts when I’m thinking because it’s me versus my personal demons. I yell be quiet to the voices screaming in my mind? I Am who I Am.