Sophomore year of high school is really the first time I can acutely remember feeling something simply wasn’t right. It was summertime and my family was driving through the Swiss countryside in a large rented van (not quite Partridge family-style, but you get the idea).

It was beautiful, and I had no reason to be upset. No schoolwork, no impending deadlines, no typical life stresses. And, yet, I was sitting by myself in the farthest back seat, on the brink of tears.

It didn’t make any sense. All the ingredients necessary for perfect contentment, as our world might define it, were present.

But I remember thinking I wanted to die, to merely stop existing.

Not in an active kind-of-way, but more so along the lines of if someone were to offer me a pill that would cause some kind of eternal, thoughtless sleep, I probably would have taken it in that moment.

Because here’s the thing about depression: it doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care where you are or what you’re doing or who you are. It just shows up, unannounced.

And it makes itself at home indefinitely.

Fast forward to my senior year. It had gotten to the point where my parents and relatives noticed a change. I had very little desire to see anybody or do much of anything beyond sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the wall.

Fortunately, I have been extremely blessed by parents who are willing to dive into the messiest aspects of life. They helped me find a counselor and start on medication.

In many ways, life regained a fair bit of color after this. Medication definitely helped, and I still take it. Perhaps one day my body will be OK without it, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. Some days depression quiets to a subtle whisper in the back of my mind, but, other days, it is ruthlessly loud.

For one of my poetry classes last semester, I wrote a snippet about my relationship with depression (especially as I've experienced it to be on those ruthlessly loud days) and I thought I’d share it.

My body seeps between

day and night

insidious molasses

settling over conversations,

laughter, dreaming.

Sometimes I hold

a firm pillow

against my body

to stave off

the lonely

and the grass is green

except when you remember

someone one day slipped

a lens over your eyes

and now I see

in black and white.

Unsure if my heart

still beats,

I don’t let the stillness

stay long enough to hear

its tender pulse.

Morning tries to quiet

the noise my knees melt

into my chest,

my trembling lips

whisper fuck and

I drop from my bed

to the ground –

the day is an insipid

drink I don’t know

how to swallow.