How to write about depression

1. Gather a notebook, a suitable pen with smooth ink, and a sweatshirt you can sink into.
2.  Stare at the blank page, wondering where to cut into cyclical thoughts.
3. Write three sentences. All of them begin with “I feel” or “these days.”
4. Either become overwhelmed by too many thoughts at once, or become frustrated by the sensation that the thoughts are leaking through your brain via a coffee stirrer.
5. Read a year’s worth of old journal entries.
6. Realize that you’ve already said everything you’ve just written a hundred times before.
7.   Cry. Mourn for the years of your life that have passed by without a single novel thought. Mourn for the years of your life yet to come that will bear the same unripe fruit.
8.   Briefly consider burning all your journals.
9.  Consider at length the contents of your medicine cabinet.
10.   Accidentally cry yourself to sleep. Wake up with an impression from the notebook binding on your forehead and the ink so smeared as to be illegible.
11.    Don’t write about depression at all. Ask yourself why you ever wanted to write about it. Convince yourself you’d rather forget everything.
12.   Dissolve into the ether.
13.   A few weeks later, gather a notebook, a suitable pen with smooth ink, and a sweatshirt you can sink into.