When you date a person with depression, here’s what you need to know: they are  the toughest survivors. Everyday is a struggle for them, a war. But they still get out of bed every morning and face their pain, their struggles. People with depression go to work every single day, do their jobs, provide for their families, and this is despite being ill, so ill that they can barely find motivation anywhere.

People with depression make a constant effort with the people they love, try to spend time with them and do things the people they love want to do, all this to show how much they appreciate having them in their lives. People with depression are highly tolerant and have to grit their teeth and put up with so much ignorance. They are aware that wherever they go, there will be people there that do not have a full grasp of what depression is as they have not suffered from it themselves. People who insist on equating depression with weakness.

Depression is a dark thing lurking inside your brain, slowly shutting every single light out till you have nothing but the abyss.

Where do you run to when the thing you are running from exists inside your head? This is an unslayable monster that rises with you in the morning and stays with you through the echoes of midnight. This is depression, and the people fighting it everyday are warriors, doing everything they can to not let this fight show on their faces, to not let this fight affect the ones they love.

People with depression are the strongest human beings. And respecting their war, their battle, their survival is the least we can do.

If you have depression, your struggle is valid. You are brave. I see you.