Do you know the profound cluster f--k it is to wake up every day with a profound hatred of one’s self?

Climbing Plato’s proverbial “black cave” every single day and even getting blinded by the light above is a horrible thing to us feeling depression every day, much in the same way as the fictional vampire feels that burn.

It is chronic emotional pain. And it occurs everyday to those who suffer it despite it’s ability to morph like a cancer into “putting on a good face” for people. This pain hidden behind the façade is intolerable to the depression sufferer on good days and on bad days, it will suck the life right out of every fiber of your being, causing impulsive actions to just make the pain go away or causing a literal “locked-in” syndrome. You cannot get out of bed, you cannot shower, you cannot go to work or class because the pain is a paralytic to your mind and soul.

We all walk amongst them, even if we don’t realize it. The best advice (beyond the mostly incompetent help around here) is to encourage free expression in them: where that’s painting, music, photography, sketching, etch, or even the arts applied to the their profession (i.e. industrial arts).

College is an atmosphere where this most insidious of diseases can hide with relative ease. We've all seen the "bookish nerd" who's life is studying but who's ulterior reason for doing such is nothing but a distraction from his own mind, his own self-hatred and emotional pain. We've all also seen the loner, the maverick "lone wolf" who compensates for a deep self-hating drive by intensely impulsive actions, and a seemingly pathological hatred of authority. We have also seen those who appear affable and sociable but who return home, alone, to an empty dorm or apartment with mascara running down their faces and tears staining the bilious pages of their journals.

#ArtSavesLives