One of my friends posted something today that jarred me out of my carefully constructed comfort zone.  She wrote about how she used to hide her struggle with depression, but after thinking about how our society stigmatizes depression, she decided to ‘come out’.

Wow.

I thought, “Good for her, but I’m never doing that.  No one is ever going to know how many times I had to talk myself out of bed in the morning; or how many times I stood in front of my fridge with a fork, because that just sounds crazy.”

Ha.  See? I was a victim to exactly what she was trying to change.  Even I think that ‘depression’ is lame and that you should just buck-the-fuck up and get on with it.   How many people who struggle with this condition feel the same way?  How many of us are there, suffering silently because we are to embarrassed to admit that we really feel bad sometimes?  I was going to write “feel bad that we just can’t cope”, but the truth is that we do cope – every day.  Sometimes it is just harder than other days.

Sigh.  I wrote to her and thanked her for her strength and honesty – and I told her I wasn’t ready to be that strong yet.  That email was my first step at publicly claiming my depression.

This is my second.