Get It Before It Gets It

    You're out on a hiking trip and you come to an opening in the forest and find a huge waterfall flowing down into a river up 30 feet. Your friends all want to cliff dive off the waterfall and although all of them successfully do it, you say no regardless of their prodding. At last when they all are about to leave you decide that you'll just man up and do it. For a second you're suspended in the air, and it feels surreal but the next you crash down hard on your back on a rock poking out in the middle of the stream.You crawl to the bank and cry out for your friends to help you go to the hospital. They take you but all the way they seem reluctant, they don't believe you jumped and that you got hurt, there isn't even blood or at the least a mark. The doctor says the same thing he says that there is nothing wrong with you. You're surprised but then get off of the seat to the floor an- ARGHHH. The pain feels unbearable but you keep walking.
     You walk along the sidewalk of an empty brick street, alone and tired. The lamps and trees are the only boundaries that protect you from falling into the street from the daze you're feeling. You try to focus on the structure of the buildings and convince yourself if everyone insists its not real then it must not be right? You tell more people and they all say that the pains not real, that its just in your mind, that its just an excuse to be apathetic, that you just want attention. You feel even more terrible, is your mind just tricking you? You ignore it and keep at your routine, lifting weights, running, swimming, but it all just makes it much much worse.
     You feel alone, neglected, dreadful. That pain in your back is the pain of depression and all the people you talk to about it is the general representation of how the public treats mental illnesses. When you press down on a button you depress it, and that is literally how depression feels. You feel weighed down, and the force denies you from doing things, even normal things you do everyday. Mental and Physical illnesses should be treated the same way, if someone was stabbed would say get over it? Walk it off? It's just a mental game? Then you shouldn't treat mental illnesses any differently.
     If you were drowning and the lifeguard just said oh how beautiful the flowers are! How nice the dock looks! What a nice hue the sky is! You can't say anything, you're already drowning. People spend too much time saying how fake you are that you've already gone. Drifted down a deep ocean and the only chance of survival is someone immediately recognizing you problem and helping you. But else you just sink deeper and deeper without any trace, except the bubbles of your last breath.