How's your mental health...?

"Hi how's you? How you doing? Great weather, How's your day going?"
Ordinary greetings on an ordinary day when ordinary people pass each other. Whether standing at a check out with another customer, meeting on the street or being served by someone in a shop or bar these are the kind of things we greet each other with, and most answers are simple, easy. Even meeting friends for a drink we answer vaguely.
We hug and laugh and clink glasses and take pictures which we post online with hashtags like #friendsareforever #lovinglife #happy
We rolls answers that start with "I'm fine" and may fall into a quick conversation about the weather being miserable and the kitchen sink blocking and fuck those politicians, sure they're destroying the country. We might even stretch as far as mentioning kids and grandkids and isn't this weather just enough to get on our nerves and did you see your one walking down the street yesterday half naked. .. sure wouldn't ya fucking die if you were her....
But what if you were asked how you were and how your day is going and you answered with "It's a shit day, I didn't want to get up today, I wanted to fuck the world off and then tell them that today I might die. I want to die but I'm looking for strength and an easy way out and I don't want to wait until tomorrow because tomorrow will hurt more than today did and today was painful because it reminded me than I'm more worthless than I was yesterday....
What if you had to face this warzone every single day?
You go to bed every night and sleep hoping you don't wake. Sleeping is easy, it doesn't hurt there. Nobody hurts there and if you don't wake up then you don't have to get up and brush your teeth and boil a kettle and get dressed. Getting dressed hurts a lot because it means you might have to leave the house and that means meeting people. Meeting people hurts like fuck because you don't know what to say and you have to say something stupid like "I'm fine"....
On the other side someone lies awake all night watching you sleep hoping that dawn will arrive and you'll stretch and smile and whisper "put the kettle on" and you'll laugh and run downstairs because after you bring them tea they'll get up and brush their teeth and get dressed and today they won't want to die....
And you'll smile because they want to live, because today is not the day they listen to depression screaming at them, because today you don't have to arrange a funeral and pick songs that once you both danced to, songs that once made you fall into the arms of someone who never imagined death separating you from each other...
Depression has two sides. ... two weary painful ugly sides and neither of them will win. Neither of them will get up tomorrow and smile because dawn has arrived. .. neither of them want night to fall for very different reasons.
One of those sides will sleep and hope never to wake and one of those sides won't sleep in case you sleep forever.....
Who will win....?
We will never know until the day comes that we can answer "How are you?" with
"I'm not fine. I need someone to help me....."

Until the day mental health is as easy to talk about as a broken arm that has a cast you can sign..... You can't sign your name on painful thoughts because there is no cast for a broken mind.....

Valerie Masters