I hate the word “depression” because

it conjures up images of a tired, weepy person with a box of Kleenex lying in bed all day. While that may be an accurate image some days, it’s hardly exemplary of this condition. They’d like you to think that depression is due to lethargy, sadness & general lack of energy. They’d like you to think you’re a car with no gas rusting on the side of the road. At least that’s the popular image as far as I’ve seen in movies, the news and various ads for pharmaceutical products (god, the Zoloft commercial with the sad lazy bubble just slays me).

But in me, and in others I’ve seen, depression isn’t like you’re lazy, unmotivated & out of gas on the side of the road. It’s the complete opposite. It’s like the forces inside you are so powerful, so chaotic and conflicted and overwhelming, that you end up paralyzed. You’re like a car on the side of the road that some idiot poured jet fuel into, so now your motor is burned up, your gears are ground to nothing, and inside you is this awful corrosive chemical burning out of control, and your wheels just can’t engage.

Sure, in either case, you’re just a busted car on the side of the road. But maybe if the cause of the breakdown is better understood, it could be better treated.

So perhaps your wife died, or your husband, father, mother, child, friend or lover. Or you’ve been beaten down by society, betrayed or bullied by others. Maybe you don’t even have a specific event, but you simply shut down to the world. You sink into this thing they call “depression”. You may behave as if you are empty, soulless, broken down on the side of the road. But I think I might know your real problem…

You’re  not empty. No, you’re full to the point of exploding. There’s a horrible pressure of a thousand bombs inside your veins. But, as with any explosive situation, there’s a safety valve that switches on to contain it. The valve shuts, containing the explosion. But it traps you inside.

To the outside world you are “depressed”. But can’t anyone see that you are the opposite? Furious, passionate, raging with frustration, slamming yourself against the walls of your cage. And at most it comes out as a teardrop. That’s all they’ll ever see.

When I kill myself I’d like it to be known that I wasn’t “depressed”, at least not by the doctor’s textbook. I didn’t kill myself because I was cold & dead inside. No, I killed myself because I was ALIVE, more than anyone could ever know.