On Depression

With the death of any celebrity, social media is bombarded with questions, grief, and all too often, extreme insensitivity. The death of Robin Williams, who was one of the architects of my childhood, brought to the forefront many theories (some innocent, some offensive) about depression and suicide.  I'd like to join the people coming forward to talk about this. 
I struggled with depression my junior year of high school.  The reasons are jumbled and cloudy, even to me. I just remember feeling like I was suffocating in an heavy blanket of toxic smog. Everything was bleak and nobody noticed me and every menial task became a marathon. After several botched, half-hearted suicide attempts, I confessed in a fit of anger to my parents and they got me help. I saw a therapist, my personal angel, for about six months, and then I was okay. 
I relapsed my sophomore year of college after a devastating breakup for about a month, eating half a granola bar a day, just enough to sustain life.   I didn't want to die this time, I just wanted to make the boy pay for what he did when he'd find me in the hospital, and I wanted him to love me because I was skinny.  This time it was a new set of loving roommates who pulled me out, and then I was okay.
Here's the thing about depression (excuse my language, family.)  Depression is a lying, evil son of a bitch. Depression tells you you are alone when you're not. Depression tells you it's never gonna get better when the light is just around the corner. Depression is like bugs beneath your skin, like a loose cog banging around in your head.  It's an itch, a clanging in your ears.  You just want it to stop.
I'm lucky to have experienced my strongest bout of depression when I was still young and impressionable. I could still rewire my brain without years of therapy, especially because I hadn't lost a loved one, I hadn't been assaulted, I hadn't been kicked out of my school or my home, I wasn't on drugs.  I didn't really have a reason to be depressed at all.  I just, was.  But no matter how trivial it may seem now, I can never dismiss what I went through simply as teenage angst or hunger for attention. It was very, very real, and very catastrophic, and very scary.  And I almost lost my life, my sixteen year old life, to it.
Sometimes it goes away, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes things get better. Sometimes the situation changes. I have a wonderful boyfriend who takes such good care of me, a loving and supportive family, and a stable job most people would kill for.  But I still have days sometimes when it feels like the sky is beginning to cave in and I can't breathe so easy and everything is just barreling toward me like a freight train.  I think Sylvia Plath described it as the veil between days being lifted, and suddenly you're staring down an endless expanse of time, with nothing to distinguish any length from another.  I just have to hope that there are little surprises behind the doors I open, and I take a deep breath and I keep walking.  Some people fight the good fight for so long, and they just get tired.  Every day they rage against the dying of the light, and they are some of the best, most beautiful people the world has ever known.  But even the strongest person can't fight forever.
I'm not condoning suicide.  But I am acknowledging the power of depression.  I believe that, in almost all cases, professional help can really change the tides.  I believe in the healing power of love and the redemption we can find when we turn our lives and our minds toward helping others, or just helping ourselves.  The main things depression hates are understanding and numbers.  The more we understand, and the more we reach out to friends and strangers and strengthen each other, the less depression wins.  Nobody should ever have to fight alone.  Let's beat this.