It’s funny viewing depression from the outside in.

Not ha-ha funny, but more like strange. Strange because when you’re depressed, you can’t imagine what it would be like to be happy again. For most people, that feeling passes fairly quickly and then, like a headache or hiccups, you forget all about your recent ailment and move right along. This is not so for everyone, however.

And for those people, being depressed seems like something that will go on forever. They are down now, they’ll be down later, and they probably were always down. If they can recall not being down, they have no idea how to get there again. They might remember that’s THEN was better than NOW, but it’s more of an analytical comparison rather than a conscious comparison. Statistics on a spreadsheet. “Oh look, A5 looks significantly jollier than D7. That’s interesting.”

This is the strangest thing for those on the outside, for they are sitting blissfully in a jacuzzi of contentedness, counting their happy-points and feeling more and more above-average by comparison. This person feels terrible…man, I definitely feel a lot better than that!

It’s a problem not easily solved, but one that impacts everyone. For some, it’s a barrier between themselves and the rest of the world, built out of sadness and introversion. For others it’s a reminder that things aren’t that bad and could definitely be much worse. Two sides of the same weighty coin.