Ever since news of Robin Williams’ suicide, we’ve all jumped on the bandwagon to highlight depression and suicide like it was something new, or something suddenly relevant. Like we would have never talked about it if it had not happened, despite the fact this isn’t the first celebrity suicide, or first anybody suicide. It happens every day, I’m sure, or often enough for it to matter on some statistical level.

Now I’ve talked at length about my own problems before. I don’t talk about them often to people not named my wife, but I talk about them on the internet a lot, in blogs, or on forums. When they say that “being funny” is often a persona funny people adapt to hide their real self, it’s often true. I talked a lot as a kid, to the point where people made fun of me or did not want to be around me. I had an over-active imagination, and would make a scene or game out of anything, and everything. I remember getting made fun of for acting out Power Rangers in the fourth grade during recess, because that was what my few friends and I wanted to be, and fuck all we were. Slimy girls with cooties weren’t going to stop us from being the motherfucking Megazord.

But eventually you get told that you are too old for running around your backyard playing Star Trek, or bouncing around your room thinking you’re a Super Saiyan. A Japanese anime that aired a couple years ago highlighted the delusion that kids transition from when they enter high school, where you are no longer a kid, but a teen, and the expectation is that your fantasies, your desires to be a space cowboy or superhero, are lost to the expectation that you are now to become an adult, learn a trade skill, and get a job. Rebellion is a natural form of this age in response to this because you don’t want to shed your childhood innocence, your wild imagination, or the feeling you got when your parents called you cute for running naked in the house. Yet at the same time you were ready to embrace staying up late, going to parties, learning how to drive, and the things that adults do. Eventually you graduate, become an adult, and thirty-something years later at your class reunion lament about how you wish you were back there again.

Depression is something that manifested for me when I entered the seventh grade. I was sent to a local catholic school because my parents felt the local junior high was not adequate enough, or something. Going from the few friends I had to no friends at that time was pretty shitty. I tried to be the funny kid, the talking kid, the hip kid. I thought if I stood out, I’d get noticed, make friends, and maybe get some badly-needed attention from girls I started to realize I wanted then. What I got was a crap-ton of demerits, a detention where I had to write the same thing on a piece of paper Bart Simpson-style, and afternoons spent washing dishes in the cafeteria. We moved halfway into that school year to Indiana, and I was placed in public school again at the local middle school, only this school had grades six through eight, where I completed sixth grade in elementary school in Ohio, so I came in at the halfway point of the halfway grade. Again, new state, no friends, didn’t even have the old ones from Ohio to fall back on.

Things continued to worsen for me through middle school. Being a heavy-set nerd, I again tried to replicate a little funny shtick to manage myself through. Did not work this time. Part of this was there already were class clowns, slick-haired “brahs” who wooed the girls with their suave charm while being the cool kid every guy wanted to be. Conforming to fashion trends was some of the worst shit I ever tried to do, and something I am not proud of. I got into rock music, Metallica, skater shoes, Billabong shit, anything that might at least keep me from being shuffled to the bottom. It sort of worked, but I could never get above the water. Part of me wanted to be a cool kid, but part of me felt it was a waste of time. I was merely pretending, and they knew that to be true. I dunno how much my parents knew, or thought of about me at the time. If I had a choice, I would have wanted to stay in Ohio, to have gone to school with the people I know. But I guess the fear of drugs or teenage pregnancy deterred them otherwise, not that it would have probably been different where we were in Indiana.

Coming to Connecticut really sort of put the final nail in the coffin for me. Besides the usual “new place, no friends” routine, I was still full delusional in my sophomore year of high school. I still played with toys, watched a lot of TV, played video games, and tried to use the internet whenever possible. I had a basement room in the house we lived in, the largest room I’d ever had, and I loved it. But after sneaking internet from NetZero one too many nights, I was moved upstairs to a first-floor bedroom much smaller than before. I made the best of it, but eventually the toys and models disappeared, and I spent more and more time online, especially after we go cable internet. The internet replaced my need for the physical, my imagination making the jump to a limitless space. I could do what I wanted, wherever I wanted. When my parents divorced, and my father moved out, my mother had no idea how the device worked. I did. So not only did I have unchecked control of it, I couldn’t be told when to put it down. It was a dangerous thing that I regret allowing myself to be consumed by to this day.

The peak of my depression and probably the closest I got to a real desire to inflict pain, but not death, to myself was after ending my relationship with my ex in 2006. We had been friends since high school, and together for a few years then. Right after we signed the lease to an apartment, she dumped me for a guy I did not like, who bragged about taking her from me to her. It hurt deeply, and what hurt the most was I could not immediately leave the lease. We moved in there, and she slept with him on my fucking bed. Even worse still, she tried to play me and him off each other, in ways unimaginable, like putting me through the wringer because I refused to come to her screening for a lump on her, and going to a friend of mine’s house in Maryland with him. It was obvious she was trying to get me to “win her back” in some battle between the man she knew would probably secure her future, and the “wild man” she claimed she wanted in bed. She made her choice, I made mine, we parted ways. I have not seen her since. I played a lot of World of Warcraft and worked my miserable job at Red Robin, constantly breaking down, having anxiety attacks, and nearly harming myself with objects. I was given two weeks to find a new job because my slumlord of a kitchen manager didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I chose to quit.

Even after starting to date the woman I would eventually marry, I had a lot of problems early on that I am surprised she did not leave me for. I constantly compared things to my last relationship, still mad, hurt, and upset over it. I dealt with the remnants of my old friends, who either were upset of my ex and I’s breakup or too far into their own affairs to care. I felt betrayed by the fact that I helped others out when they needed it, but not when I needed it. Only a couple stuck by me, and they’re the only ones I still communicate with now off-and-on. Eventually everything peaked to a point where it became a matter of I either lose it all, or reboot myself to be with my girlfriend.

I chose the latter.

But let’s not misunderstand here. I did not beat depression. I did not beat the intense anxiety and sadness I still feel to this day. But I realized that no one is going to pick you back up but yourself and those who love you. As a society we feel the need to shove people who aren’t like us in homes, or psychiatrists, doctors, or counselors. My mother tried to get me to see some after the divorce. I didn’t want to speak to someone I didn’t know, I wanted to speak to someone I did know and have them fucking answer why my life fell apart in a matter of days. It’s been a long time since then, and I’ve come to terms with things and moved on, but I’d say the same thing now as I did then, every time. I don’t need validation, I don’t even need sympathy or what you think. I, and I imagine anyone else who deals with this, need understanding. We need to know that you are listening, that you are willing to help us take our time to reorganize our lives and priorities to what they can be or should be. My wife didn’t do anything to change me other than be by my side while I stayed up countless nights unable to sleep trying to make sense of things in my head. She didn’t tell me what kind of person she thinks I should be, or how I should act, though I imagine she wished many incarnations thereof. most importantly, she did not judge me, or write me off before getting to know me, like a lot of people do. Most people just see computer nerd who likes anime and assume he is a shallow, near-autistic simpleton who rejects reality in favor of being a motherfucking robot just because his avatar is of a large-eyed girl.

I could sit here and tell you what I am, or more importantly, what I am not.

Depression is something we all share, but its severity differs by many different people, and isn’t mass-treatable with drugs and mental therapy. I could very well walk into an office and walk out with Lexapro tomorrow, but is that going to solve anything? It won’t. It will mitigate it. I’d rather face my demons than stare at them from across the abyss forever. They very well may beat me, I can only imagine what Mr. Williams thought during his final moments. That scares me more. Death has always scarred me. Because no matter how shitty my current situation is, I want to keep living to change it, make a new future, or enjoy what I have in the present. Since turning my shit around in 2008 and getting back into IT, which I should have been in to start since graduation, I’ve changed so much and found new outlooks on life. I am not scarred to have kids, to raise kids, to be a parent, to own a house, to do the things I feel adults should do. I like my cartoons and games, and they will never go away, much to my wife’s displeasure. They used to be coping mechanisms, shields, or hideaways from society, but now they’re hobbies, and I enjoy them alongside my responsibilities like normal people.

Depression is real, and it’s not something you just turn on or off, it’s something that develops over time. It’s not easy to pretend to be someone else, but eventually it becomes easier and easier, until you cannot tell what is real and what is not. It’s a feeling I hope to never have to go through again, but I likely will, and some of you may too. Just remember the people who love and care for you, because they’re going to be the ones to bring you back and let you know that you’re not alone. Because the ultimate form of despair for anyone suffering from extreme depression, is being alone.