Rock bottom feels something like getting hit in the face with a shovel at the foot of a deep, stone well, blindly tumbling backwards into the hole, and falling to the bottom with your feet in the air.
It will feel like getting your skull bashed in.
It will feel like you're dying.
And when you settle into your hole of stone, the thing that will ultimately pull you out of it will be the fact that you can still see the light.
You'll have one small piece of truth to guide you out of that space, even if it takes you ten times longer than you ever expected.
Eventually, you will find the strength to the climb out of the hole.
Now, let's introduce clinical depression into this tired metaphor.
This will change the game entirely, because after you land, laying there on your back at the bottom of the well, depression is the spherical stone that slowly inches its way across the top of the well, blocking the light.
You'll be laying there helpless and crippled as the stone eclipses the light for however long you're in the well.
Nobody is going to move the stone for you.
Somehow, you are responsible for finding your way to the top of the well and moving the stone yourself.
Depression, or any mental illness for that matter, and I'm talking about the real kind of mental illnesses here, not the basic bitch version of mental illness where you assume you must have seasonal depression because you get sad at the end of fall when Starbucks stops running the pumpkin spice latte.
Example: You run into someone you know at the store, and they'll be like "Hi! I haven't seen you in ages, how are you?" And you, the clandestinely mental ill person, will have to look at Susan, or whatever the fuck her name is, and say something along the lines of "Oh, Susan! It's good to see you!"
Here's the first lie. You don't like Susan. You think Susan is a fake-ass bitch.
"I've been well and good, how are you?" The power board of mental illness will still be active at this point.
Smiling and nodding at someone you barely know as the two of you discuss the weather.
Susan will have absolutely no idea.
She'll say goodbye, prance out the doors of the store, click open the doors of her Subaru and rush her way into her car because she's late for a 'thing', and you, the mentally ill person (and when I say you I mean me) will hang your head in the back of of the drug store as the storm of your neurosis continues to chip away at the foundation of who you are.
This is a pretty solid example of what it feels like to be legitimately mentally ill.
I'm not sorry if that made you uncomfortable.
There's one thing that I'm 100 percent certain of when it comes to people who suffer from a mental illness: We're all sick to fucking death of having to constantly apologize for who we are.
