It’s a funny thing, depression. I still get this impulse, to just lie down on the side of the road and let others deal with taking care of me. So far, I’ve kept myself from it. And I know, if someone didn’t come in about 5 minutes, I’d get bored, and pull myself up by my own bootstraps.
The line between clinical and situational depression is a fuzzy one. I guess I can be thankful that I’ve had enough terrible things happen in my life to actually depressed about that I can’t relate to clinical depression. (Or wouldn’t know it if I had it.) However, I’ve known enough people who suffered from it to know it’s real and can be overpoweringly painful. My heart goes out to them, knowing that, other than just being there for them, there isn’t much I can do.
Be glad you never had to really deal with psychomotor depression, when your reflexes slow down and it takes actual physical effort to put one foot in front of the other. It feels like your body is throwing a tantrum, and you want it to stop, but you can’t speed up. The next step up from sitting and staring at a spot on the wall as the shadows slide past it like raindrops.