We are amongst you, in internal sadness and physical pain. Some are young, most only just learning that they belong to an exclusive club called sadness. Sadness kills.

The conditions are many, different people have different symptoms, with personal battles, each one of us. This is no pity party, no self-damaging condition we bring upon ourselves.

It is not a fault. It is not a flaw, it is a disease. As cancerous cells eat away at one's body, so is depression, as it eats away at a person's soul. A person's reason for living and sufficient stability, mentally to take on challenges even the norm find hard to endure.

Hi, I am a girl. I am 23 and I have been suffering from depression since I was 15. I am scared of this world, scared even more of my dependence on medication to feel better. 'Feel better' to me is to feel normal.

Some days I wake up and I can't get out of bed. Anxieties, panic attacks in people-filled shopping malls. I am mentally-ill and chemically unstable, and it makes me act in ways that I cannot forgive myself.

Bipolar disorder makes one have emotions and feelings at extremes, there is no middle. The worst I have been, is being unable to stop crying, yelling and hitting my head on walls for 2-4 hours in front of my crying mother.

I am better now. Struggling to make a life, any sort of life. It is easy, from practice, to pretend that I am on top of the world, but no one knows what I feel inside. This is what we go through.

Trips to the Malaysian Mental Health Association and the psychiatrist has become a norm for me. People with my condition find it hard to maintain any sort of stability.

Relationships often go wrong and sometimes go on, for the wrong reasons. Finding jobs and employers that understand come close to nil.

It is easier for me to keep it inside, for losing friends and workmates is harder to bear if you tell them about your condition. They will most likely name your 'condition', the condition of 'making excuses'.

Depression is real. It is not 'all in your head'. Many suffer in silence without any help and support thinking that it is all just their fault. Feeling like dying from time to time, is not normal.

Feeling sadness for days on end is not normal. Feeling physically unable to leave the house is not normal. Having uncontrollable emotions is not normal. I have sought out for help.

Parents may or may not understand, but try talking to them should you ever feel this way. In Asian society, being mentally ill is such a taboo topic. Our Western counterparts have it hard as well, no doubt.

Malaysia is not opening up to the prospect of sadness being an illness; our people handle economic depressions better than internal emotional ones.

I write to reach out to others like me. You are not alone.