http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

If you don’t click that link and read through you’re an idiot, and if you’re not laughing out loud by the end you probably don’t have a soul. Just kidding. Not really.

The morning after I finish my 2,000 word essay about my “journey” to “break through depression”, after I’ve spent weeks struggling to describe how I went from normal to hopeless to (better than?) normal again, I get a link to this piece of pure genius. And I’m like, holy cow. I should have just printed this out and mailed it in. It is so right on.

I remember that trip to the video store, roaming about the place in a haze, I remember the curious stares of passerby – and that’s what I missed in my essay. I missed the essential freedom that comes with not giving a *shit* anymore. When you’re walking down the street and you haven’t showered for days, and maybe you’ve slept for the past 25 hours or maybe you haven’t slept at all, and suddenly you realize that NOTHING CAN TOUCH YOU ANYMORE? That’s a pretty incredible feeling. Or non-feeling, as the case may be.

I think that’s what was so helpful about The Bin. Once you’re in there, it’s like, yeah? Well I’m in a MENTAL INSTITUTION. So what? There’s power in surrender, and there’s strength within weakness, and wellness, for me, was finding a balance between the two. That invincible feeling’s wearing off these days, and I do find myself often anxious again, but damn if it wasn’t good while it lasted. I kind of want to go ride my bike now.