Depression

It's interesting to me how it can be so difficult to explain to someone how depression feels and why it's so important to understand what you are dealing with before offering help. Here is a good analogy that I feel does a good job of conveying the struggle and the reality of it's longevity and power. Many people with depression are positive, hopeful, and optimistic people and sometimes that can be enough. But depression is one hell of a beast and it can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

Getting to the analogy, for context someone prior had quoted the following:

"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."

The analogy for depression was replied as follows:

"But you can't get out of bed because it's dark. But then the sun rises, so you spend a long time talking yourself through the repairs, and then you finally did it! You fixed it. It works great for three days ... and then on the fourth day, breaks again. And then you spend two nights in the dark, hoping maybe it's a fluke.

On the third day you get up again, and fix it, maybe not while trying as hard. And then you go back to having a working switch for a few days, when it breaks yet AGAIN.
This time, you spend five days in the dark. You start to think that maybe you can't fix it. Then it consumes your thoughts, and you start to worry about it, so you can't sleep. You start to yell at the switch, you get mad, angry, you cry. And then you can hear the darkness taunting you. It starts to burrow a hole in your chest, and it hurts. Not a sharp pain, but this nagging, annoying, dull pain that is relentless. It needs to know that YOU know it's there. If you forget, it abruptly slaps you in the face. It'll pull your hair just when you've started to hold your head up. It chokes you when you've found your voice again. The darkness whispers how much of a looser you are, and asks you why you even bothered to try and fix your switch. You soon start to agree with the darkness, and start to wonder yourself why you bother.

Day in and day out, no matter what you try, you can't fix your switch. Some people inject some useless dribble. "Maybe you should just try to see better."
"Maybe you should just try to move to another place where a switch works."
"I hear if you paint your room and clean it everyday, you'll feel better, and so will your switch."
And then someone lights a candle for you. And you start to focus on that light and slowly beat the darkness back. You look at the light, and not the darkness. The pain in your chest subsides, and you decide to put your all into fixing your switch again. And finally ... You do it. It works. You work. Darkness gone!

But on the fourth day ..."

Of all places this was found on Reddit in a thread about uplifting quotes for difficult times. A bit of a buzz kill, but a reality that I thought may be interesting to people who would like to gain some understanding.