We made Quesadillas and invited friends over for dinner. They were made with sliced up honey-barbecue chicken and tasted candied sweet, like avocado, although we hadn’t used any avocado. A conversation broke out about our friend who just recently seriously considered suicide while sober then again while drunk on Saturday and had to go the hospital. The quesadillas only tasted sour after that.

This is a different friend from yesterday’s post.

She’s had major depressive episodes and chronic depression for a while now, and its really sad, because she is incredibly talented, dedicated and cheery when she’s not haunted by the specter of her depression. It really does haunt her, too: We’ve tried to dispel it multiple times with conversation, love, care, counseling, and every time it lifts its ghostly lantern and leads her away into the dark again. Every time she think about suicide, she comes one step closer to committing to it. Recently, she tried to overdose on pain reliever, but didn’t take enough. When she tries to actually commit the act, she usually texts someone. There’s still a shred of her left fighting in there, who doesn’t want to let go of this world. We have to find it and protect it.

It’s difficult though, trying to help friends and family with depression. Common affirmations of the value of life tend to ring hollow to them – “it gets better” or “other people have it worse” makes there (often unexplained and persistent) sadness feel trivial or surmountable, when it doesn’t feel like that at all to them. As someone whose been depressed in the past . . . the one thing I wanted was for someone to say something to me that was actually true, and not say more bullshit, more generic help, just say yeah, it really does suck huh, yeah fuck living. Eventually, someone did say that, and it made me feel a lot better. I’ve said that to my friend before, and its helped, but it only wads off the specter for so long.

What she really needs is antidepressants. When the ghost of depression holds you so closely that he’s possessed your body, that”s the only way to force him out.