Explaining depression

Some ask me why I stay the way I am.
Why I show no initiative, no effort;
Why I stay put, lethargic and cold.
Snubbing shots at conversation,
Dark and brooding

I say, “It is not me,
It's my depression.”
“Bah! Depression, my foot!”
Then comes the rare moment when I explain,

Depression is a dark cloud forever dripping acid on you,
Only on you.
When a bubble of thought forms,
The drops fall harder
Into the bubble, corrupting it.
Making it harder to execute.

You walk, you run
Trying to overtake the cloud.
But she is on you, only on you.
She has latched itself onto you;
She feeds herself off you. 

She, a parasitic sadness.
You, the eager host.
You give it your all,
Your strength, your grit, your energy,
You give it your all.

The next drop falls into your realisation.
You suddenly do not want to fight, to escape.
You tell yourself it is too hard, too worthless.
You stop trying, and let yourself into it,
Completely.

You realise that you have no way out,
No way to destroy this murky cloud,
Can't fight.
No way to escape,
Nowhere to flight.

You do not feel anymore.
You are numb, emotionless.
It is pleasant to not feel, to be dazed forever.
But then you burn,
You start stinging all over.

The scorching sensation of this sweet acid,
It pulls you in. You are melting off,
The pain, the horrid pain of this amplified sadness,
It calls to you, and you go
Willingly, but not quite.

Then comes the crowd,
The worried crowd, telling you it’s all right, it happens.
The shrink, shrinking in sight
With every wrong pill he prescribes.
“It is your fault”, they say
“You should tell him everything.”

But how can you explain the ghostly poison
That rots your soul,
The acid that breaks your bones?
How indeed,
Can you explain this surreal madness?

The echo of a cracked heart
Reverberating over and over again.
You cannot!
It is inexplicable, like a vague line of poetry
With a hundred tangled interpretations.

So, you make friends with the cloud,
Shake hands, share a smile.
A grim one, bent by the weight of helplessness.
Until she burns you, down into ashes, free and flying.
Until she passes on,
To rain down on the next victim.