It's World Mental Health Day, and I want to talk about it. I've had full-blown depression since I was 16, and I can remember the shadow of it on my heart as far back as I have memories. I remember being a boy at recess, sitting behind a tree, far away from others.
I didn't understand what it was, but I knew it was there, looking at me. 16 was when it first hit hard. That was bad, but 17 was worse. I was one of the captains of the swim team, but I was dying inside. I remember sitting in the pool before a meet and just sinking.
Staying underwater, not wanting to ever leave it. Several of my teammates lifted me up out of the water. I won't ever forget the feeling of being lifted out.
I remember sneaking out of the house, driving to the empty library parking lot. Cold, bright Michigan night. I laid on the ice. I wanted to be eaten by nighttime. I got up, but I still feel the sheer weight of my body. Like it was impossible to stay upright.
My parents did their best with it, better than their parents, who did better than their parents. I was lucky to have a mom who was a nurse and who at least understood some of what was happening to me.
Telling her I wanted to die scared her, rightly. It's easy for me to judge the way she handled it, but she got me care. She saved my life. Many others have done the same since.
It was like that for a long time. Every winter, this seed in my heart bloomed and took over my body and mind. I got better at handling it, recognizing when I needed care. Finding my Zen sangha helped. Learning how to be strategically productive helped.
Now, unlearning how to be productive helps. California sunshine helps a lot, too. Still, it's never gone away. Accepting that I will never cure my depression has been difficult.
Like my blue eyes, it's something that can never be away from me, not really. To dig out my eyes would be to hinder myself, as would trying to dig out my depression. I spent years trying to do that.
But that's not how it is. I only hurt myself in the process. My late 20s and early 30s have been largely about witnessing that wound of resisting myself, letting it heal, slowly, agonizingly, and never in the way that I expect.
People are sometimes surprised to hear I have depression. I think I'm pretty open about it, but the real issue is what we think depression looks like. Even people *with* depression have a hard time seeing it in others.
A couple of years ago, I was talking with a friend going through a bout of depression. We talked about my experience with it, and he was shocked. "You seem so happy," he said. That's because I *was*. It's just not like that.
Depression, as a clinical disorder, is so weaselly because it tricks you into thinking it's something inherently missing in you, not the more banal fact that you have a medical condition.
Obviously, there's an interplay between life conditions/events and a depressive episode, but really, one of the biggest tricks major depressive disorder pulls on you is to convince you that there's something missing in *you*.
There's not. Not really. Yes, maybe you need therapy or medication. But the feeling that there is something missing in *you* is different than needing medicine. As Suzuki Roshi said: "Each of you is perfect the way you are... and you can use a little improvement."
And that's all I want to say. Thinking about my younger self makes me want to cry. Thinking about others going through the same thing makes me want to cry. May we all be well. May we all find peace. May well all see our inherent perfection, raw, wounded, gnarled perfection
