1. You may know a depressed person who whenever you meet him/her always seems to be in a super good mood. Energetic. Smiling. Happy to see you. Asking you questions. Making jokes. Ready to help. Hardworking. Those kind of depressed people are real. They are like me.

2. Depressed people don’t necessarily want to stay in bed all day… Depressed people can be very active. Maybe waaaay more active than some happy people. It’s like the demon of depression is hunting them and being active and staying productive is the only way to prevent the demon from catching up. He always does of course. You can’t keep up. Eventually he bites you in your ankles and you trip.

3. Depressed people don’t necessarily put on depressed music sitting in bath contemplating if the temperature of the water is exactly right to make the blood stream faster if they do decide to slash their wrists. Most of the time we are just looking for what will make the pain stop.

4. Depressed people feel super guilty about being depressed. There are always people who have it way worse. Our own mind attacks us and goes: how dare you feel bad!! And yet it’s undeniable: we do feel like crap.

5. Depressed people usually (you have malignant people of any stripe and color) don’t want anyone else to feel depressed. Once you have had a taste of it you don’t wish it on anyone else. Well, you do wish it on child molesters, Nazi concentration camp personnel, certain American politicians and Israeli soldiers, obviously, but generally speaking you do not wish your fellow human beings to ever feel like this. What you most wish to prevent is that you will pass on this kind of mental disaster area to your children. And you know they will eventually at least feel that you unhappy no matter how well you try to hide it.

Which makes it feel all the more unjust. You now have something that is already SHIT on its own and now you are carrying it like a virus. So now you are frantically looking for some sort of vaccine to make sure your child doesn’t get to be like you.

But you realize the only way to vaccinate your children against depression is to – of course- give them all the normal things they AND to be happy yourself. And there’s the rub. You don’t know how to do that.

Depressed people often have their minds stuck in an endless worry loop where the worries just keep spawning more worries. Bigger worries. More demanding worries. Scarier worries.

And those continue even in our dreams.

The last time I had a nice dream was a few years ago. It completely took me by surprise. I am so not used to it.

And maybe the mind is being merciful there. It’s an icy old shower to wake up from a nice dream and be catapulted right back into the omnipresent gray fog that hangs over a depressed person’s reality.

I find that colors become a nuisance when depressed. Or something you know that is there but without experiencing it.

You know you have snapped out of depression when the colors of the world seem to fill you up.