Her bright and radiant smile is something that is showing to the outside world. But, behind her cheerful face, she hides a heavy, unbearable weight.
Her laugh is contagious. She lights up every room when she walks in with her shiny eyes and her glowing face that emit happiness and optimism.
To an outsider, she looks like she has everything in her life put together. She is living her dreams that she’s been speaking of for years. To other people, she has the perfect life. She is living her fairytale. And why wouldn’t she? She deserves every beautiful thing that she has.
However, when she is alone – things are different. When she is all alone, instead of her beautiful smile, there are tears streaming down her face.
She cries in a desperate need to find the strength in her to keep pushing forward. She cries because of her pain in her heart and body that are never at rest. She cries because even though she works extremely hard, her efforts are not valued enough. Finally, she cries because of the emptiness that is in her heart that penetrates her to the core.
Yet, she finds the strength to smile.
To smile for the immense love that she gets from her closest ones. To smile for all the breathtakingly gorgeous sunsets and sunrises. To smile for all her dreams that she turned into a reality. To smile because, at the end of the day, she knows in her heart that everything will fall into place.
She is your friend, your neighbor, your colleague, your sister, your wife, and your mother. She tries to play so many different roles perfectly even though she knows that she is not perfect, but she strives to be. She always, always puts other people’s needs ahead of her own.
She hides all this behind her big smile, but inside her, she is breaking apart. She hides the fact that she is dealing with high-functioning depression every single day.
High-functioning depression is a debilitating mental disorder that is concealed just enough for the person to be able to carry out their day-to-day activities.
If you think that you too are dealing with high-functioning depression, here are the signs that you should be looking for: anxiety, enhanced irritability, feeling like you are wasting your time, feeling like you are not enough, being too hard on yourself, dismissing the things that were once important to you (relationships, friendships, appearance etc.), or in some cases substance abuse problems.
If you too are feeling this way, or if you know someone who struggles with this, please know that there are always people around you who want to help you.
You are not alone. You matter. You are stronger than your depression.
