Let me tell you right away that I am uncomfortable recounting my experience with depression. Not because it's painful to talk about (though it is), but because I created this web page about depression to help other people, not to go on and on about myself. However, I can't forget how illuminating William Styron's account of his depression in Darkness Visible was to me before I was diagnosed and treated for depression. It really was the book that made me recognize my illness and therefore led me to seek professional help. Since Styron is so much more eloquent than I could ever be, I urge you to read his book. If nothing else, it will help you explain your illness to other people, if you have it, or help you to understand a loved one's pain if you are close to someone who suffers from the "black dog", as Churchill called it. If you are interested in my story, read on. You may recognize yourself or someone else in it.

I was a painfully shy child. I had very few friends, was terrified of talking to strangers or a group of people, and was careful never to draw attention to myself. I was afraid that if I was the center of attention, I would look stupid or do something wrong. It's likely that as a child, I thought my father's leaving was due to my behaving badly or doing something wrong, so I was always afraid of doing that again, and making my mother leave. I sought refuge in reading, confident that in books I could never say or do the wrong thing. That served to cut me off even more from the rest of the world.

As a teenager I was moody and self-absorbed. Of course, that's common for teenagers, so my behavior was written off as normal. Unfortunately, I also had no interest in school, sports, clubs, etc. Part of it was the fog that was beginning to descend over my mind from time to time and part of it was a fear of failing in anything new. The only time I felt good about myself was when a boy was chasing after me. Of course the flip side of that was that a rejection from a boy I was interested in sent me into a black mood, unable to do anything but cry. Occasionally I thought of going to a psychiatrist and saying, "help me" but in that scenario I also saw rejection. I pictured the doctor saying, "There's nothing wrong with you - why are you wasting my time when I could be seeing people who really have problems?"

My college years for the most part were relatively free of depression. I was much more social, and with the exception of being expelled for one semester due to a lack of interest in my classes, I was more motivated academically. Until what I think of as the "black hole time" - what was probably my first major depression. I was in my last semester of school, worrying about finding a job in time so that I could stay in Boston with my boyfriend, and panicking over the prospect of being entirely on my own. The semester before I had been raped by a male friend, and this may have been a trigger. My moodiness got worse and worse, and I was constantly fighting with my boyfriend, through no fault of his. In my mind, I vividly saw myself teetering on the edge of a bottomless black hole. I felt that if I fell in, I would never stop falling. In desperation I went to the walk-in clinic of a local hospital and told the doctor that I thought I had very bad PMS. I described my symptoms, and he told me to keep a record of my moods. I promised to do so, but I was in no shape to follow through. I could barely get my schoolwork done, and certainly didn't have the energy to keep a log on top of that. I found out years later that he had made a notation concerning possible depression in my file, and that he would follow up with me. He didn't get in touch with me again, probably because I graduated a few weeks later.