BK:

I've battled severe depression for most of my life. I know, from experience, that it gets to the point where just stopping makes perfect, logical, reasonable sense. Sometimes it stays at that point for a terrifyingly long time. I also know from experience that there's not much any one person or even a group of people can say that doesn't sound cliche and trite and inconsequential, and that when you try every way you know how to explain it to people, *no one* gets it. Everyone is so busy being shocked and scared about what you've said, that they don't hear how god-awful, gut-wrenching this pain is. *I get it.* I hate it. I fear it. But at times, I almost embrace it because it's so familiar, and it's mine, and I don't see the hope of anything else.

I've lived it. And I've survived it. I'll probably have to do it again. And I promise you, if you can focus on making it through tonight, EVERY night, you will wake up, every morning, and things will slowly, eventually get brighter. The darkness recedes, and even though you walk around looking over your shoulder for it to come back, sometimes almost wishing it would come back because the in-between can be as dangerously empty as the worst of it, and you're terrified to feel better because the feeling good is so tenuous and fragile, and the worrying about the feeling good going away again overwhelms the good feeling itself, eventually, that fear goes away too. It does start to feel good to feel good again. It takes a long time. But the journey is a relief, too. I PROMISE. Please hear me: I PROMISE.