Depression. To hit rock bottom, to feel as though your life is worthless, that there is no salvation and no future. To see that there is nobody who cares about you enough to value your life. To be insignificant,unheard. To feel the pain greater than can be endured, an unending dreariness that drags on whenever you are awake. To wish that there was a way to sleep peacefully forever.

Loneliness. To exist in this world, to live this life without the feeling of brotherhood or companionship. To be amongst millions of bodies, but to feel apart, isolated and alone. To gaze upon people, striving for a connection, but to feel nothing, unable to join. To walk one’s own path in the cold shadows, with not a single soul ahead, not a single soul behind.

Bitterness. To have glimmers of hope, only to be extinguished by others. To have faith in others, only to be disappointed. To see the best of people, only to be shown the ugliness within. To imagine the laughter and grins to be genuine, only to be revealed that they are false. To curl your lips in a smile, disguising the snarl that lays beneath.Some may say that everyone feels loneliness, depression, and bitterness. They say that all you have to do is hold your head high. All you have to do is smile and reach out to others. All you have to do is to look at the bright side. Those people are fucking idiots. Loneliness is not a choice. Depression is not a choice. Bitterness is not a choice. Things are not as simple as they seem, and I have no doubt that those of us who have at one point reached the hellish depths of the pain of humanity have a very good reason for their outlooks. We do not choose these demons; they choose us.Bitterness is grown from disappointment. One cannot have begun a cynic and turned to bitterness, for bitterness requires a bright outlook to be dimmed time after time with the darkness of human nature. True bitterness requires endurance and a truly hopeful heart filled with enthusiasm. Nietzsche said that the strongest have their moment of fatigue. It is when the fatigue is too great that bitterness fills the hole where hope once shined, where there is no longer any strength to be found from within.

Loneliness in its purest form is borne of an inherent love for mankind. It is the constant suppression of such hopefulness and benevolence through the beatings of selfish ingrates. One cannot have been a hermit and claim loneliness. Loneliness feeds on the broken spirit of a generous and giving person.

Compassion and empathy is something I find lacking in many people. One should not give advice on these things if they have not walked a mile in the dirty, broken, soleless shoes of a downtrodden man. To trivialize the pains of bitterness and the aches of loneliness, it is an insult. Merely recognize and understand that these boils and bruises were not created from within, but inflicted by the world.