All I can say to this is yes. Yes. Yes and thank you, Pearl, and @kateordeath for pass­ing it along (the arti­cle, not the depres­sion). Yes. Exactly. And I am sorry. And thank you every­one and I am sorry.

Depres­sion is humil­i­at­ing. It turns intel­li­gent, kind peo­ple into zom­bies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the abil­ity to think clearly, to feel any­thing, to ascribe value to your chil­dren, your life­long pas­sions, your rel­a­tive good for­tune. It scoops out your nor­mal healthy abil­ity to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrec­og­niz­able sludge that finds no plea­sure, no delight, no point in any­thing out­side of bed. You alien­ate your friends because you can’t com­port your­self socially, you risk your job because you can’t con­cen­trate, you live in mod­er­ate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capac­ity to stop the down­ward plunge. You have no per­spec­tive, no emo­tional reserves, no faith that it will get bet­ter. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inabil­ity to deal with life like a reg­u­lar human, which exac­er­bates the depres­sion and the isolation.Depression is humiliating.If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye con­tact with the gro­cery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the night­mare of depres­sion over an aver­agely tur­bu­lent nor­mal life.It’s not an inca­pac­ity to cope with day to day liv­ing in the mod­ern world. It’s an inca­pac­ity to func­tion. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every bless­ing to you. If depres­sion has taken root in you or your loved ones, every bless­ing to you, too.Depression is humiliating.No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in fam­i­lies, it ruins fam­i­lies. You can­not imag­ine what it takes to feign nor­malcy, to show up to work, to make a den­tist appoint­ment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toi­let paper on hand, when you are exert­ing most of your capac­ity on try­ing not to kill your­self. Depres­sion is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imag­i­nary. Com­pas­sion is also real. And a depressed per­son may cling des­per­ately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remem­ber your com­pas­sion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depres­sion. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.

ᔥ Pearl.