I used to romanticize depression a lot. 8 year old me watching gacha videos of a character jumping off a building or engaging in S.I., it wasn’t okay. It *seemed* like everyone back then, kids i mean, were watching this stuff too. But they weren’t. I romanticized it because everyone in my life, other than my mom, didn’t care about me. No one played with me or talked to me. And contrary to my mom caring about me, she never played with me. I would sit in my living room for hours, waiting for my mom to keep her promise and come back to play barbies with me. But all she did was smoke, watch tv, and drink shitty beer. I wanted the attention, the attention that only seemed to come if you were depressed or in visible pain. Just 3 years later, I had severe depression and anxiety. I was on the brink of committing suicide. And it’s sick to think that i wanted that type of worry and attention at 8 years old. Because i didn’t get a single ounce of it when I was 11, 12, 13, or 14.