I imagine that unless you're disabled, walking is pretty easy, right? And if I told you to get up and walk to the bathroom, you could probably do it, right?

Now imagine that you're sick. You have the flu. Your body aches and your head hurts and you're so tired and weak that you have to clutch the wall to make it to the bathroom. You drag yourself through the hallway wondering if you're going to make it. Every step is a struggle. You have to hold onto the bathroom counter to sit down on the toilet, and when you finally manage to drag yourself back into bed, it feels like a miracle. We've all been there. It's the worst, but you at least have the comfort of knowing it'll be over soon.

That's what my depression feels like. But with everything. And unlike with the flu, it doesn't go away after a few days. No, I'm not literally holding onto the walls dragging myself around, but everything suddenly takes a lot more effort than it ever did before.

And at first it's tolerable. At first it's hard, but you can kind of manage. You make up for it by going to bed a little earlier at night and turning your friends down when they ask you to go out for drinks on the weekend.

But eventually even the minimum that you've managed to maintain is too much, and you get to the point where you feel lucky if you can manage to take a shower, put on clothes, and eat all in the same day. Some days you can't do even that and you instead lie in bed, hungry but too tired to get up and eat, waiting until your bladder aches to get up and pee because the bathroom is so far away.

You withdraw from your friends and family because you don't have the energy to spend time with them. You don't have anything to talk about because you never do anything. You aren't a very good listener because your mind is always drifting, always a blur. And they're getting mad because you keep flaking on them, or because you won't go out with them in the first place, or because you keep missing their texts and calls.

All the while there's a voice in the back of your head taunting you. You live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head and money and clothes and food and clean drinking water and a shower and you don't have cancer or AIDS or anything, so what is your problem? Why can't you just stop being so lazy?

And you start to wonder about what your condition is doing to the people you care about. It seems like they're getting sick of you. You can't really blame them. If you rely on someone else financially, you start to think about how much easier their life would be if you weren't around. Why should they support you if all you do nothing for them in return?

Other people will tell you that you are loved and that you shouldn't think of suicide because it will hurt the people who care about you.

But it's hard to imagine what benefit you could possibly provide to these people when all you do is lie in bed all day. What is it that you bring into their lives that would be so terribly missed if you were gone? Are the happy memories from a time when you used to be different enough to justify wasting their time and their money and hard work?

So you make the decision. Because you don't see an end in sight. Because it's been months and it's only getting worse, and you're terrified to imagine how much deeper you can fall. And you know deep down that your loved ones will move on without you, because they already are.