My particular brand of clinical depression is very straight forward: family history + traumatic childhood + chronic illness = first major clinical depression before I was legal, a second within the next two years.

I know many people who struggle to understand how they could be depressed when they feel that they “have everything”; by which they mean a good job, a nice house, a family, an acceptable marriage. All of which is somehow negated by the fact that they have wonky brain chemistry. As if their depression is a personal assault on their life. As if it’s some kind of commentary on their expectations vs. reality.

Depression isn’t that simple and while we (sort of?) understand that now, thanks to SCIENCE!, there are still a lot of misunderstandings about what it feels like to be depressed. It’s probably at least somewhat related to why we all experience pain in subtly different ways; proverbially we’re all more or less wired differently.

Sometimes wires are crossed or snipped or frayed. What we want, what we need to feel alive, is that energy that pulses around the wire itself: the electricity we call a soul.

The first time I considered the prospect of suicide I was around eight or nine and was in the pink bathroom of our old house. While peeing, I often liked to read the backs of the bottles of various shampoos, lotions and cleaners — mostly so I could challenge myself to sound out the lengthy names of the chemicals. I liked to read and it didn’t matter what: I just enjoyed looking at words.

On this particular trip to the urinary library I happened to pick up a bottle of bleach my mother had presumably been using to clean. In retrospect, I’m sure I knew there was a connection between the smell of bleached vomit and my mother’s long trips to the pale pink room. Whether that subconsciously drove my curiosity, I couldn’t say, but reading the warning on the back of the bottle I grew suddenly very excited — a rush of adrenaline, the feeling of a great secret being revealed to me as I took in the Clorox warning.

Keep out of reach of children.

I was immediately horrified and delighted to have something I wasn’t supposed to in my tiny hands. The thrill of it was soon replaced by a very sudden and intrusive idea: this stuff could make me die.

Not a frightening thought in the least. I found it oddly comforting.

Now I knew I had a way out.

I pulled up my pants and put the bleach back in its place beside the tub, not realizing what I had discovered — and what would haunt me from then on — was my need for an escape hatch.

Maybe my suicidal ideation is not as overt as some. I rarely have felt, in these times of hopeless thinking, that I wanted to die. It was more that I didn’t want to be alive. I wasn’t lusting for heaven or anything. Wanting to die is not the same as not wanting to live — one is active and the other is passive. My favorite suicidal fantasy is, quite simply, that I fall asleep and never wake up, just fade into nothingness. Disembodiment.

The thing about depression is that even when things are going rather well — I have a lot to look forward to and I survive the majority of my days relatively unscathed — there is still a distinct sense of meh that permeates my waking hours. Even when things aren’t outright terrible, if someone said “hey wanna fall asleep forever?” I wouldn’t hesitate to take them up on it.

But don’t be fooled. It’s not the sleep I crave; it’s the not-waking-up.

Depression isn’t necessarily feeling “sad” or “down” — in fact for me, depression is feeling nothing at all. Or, at best, feeling on a very narrow spectrum. What comes to mind is “she runs the gamut of emotion from A to B” — except it’s more like, “she runs the gamut of emotions from uppercase ‘A’ to lowercase ‘a’.”

Maybe that’s why the suicidal feelings are more like a veil that I live under all the time. Like Miss Havisham in her wedding attire, my entire perception is filtered through this yellowed lace I can’t take off, even though other people insist I could if I’d just try. From where they’re standing it looks like the veil is just perched atop my head, to be easily removed if I’d just lift it — but what they don’t see is how I’ve been wearing it for so long my skin has grown around the lace, making it part of me. I don’t really want to wear it, but if I were to cut it off, parts of me would have to go with it. I’d bleed.

Even with the serotonin pills I feed myself with my morning coffee, I still feel more or less hollowed out. Depression doesn’t hurt me anymore, but it does have a way of stealing my joy. I suppose because I’m so empty, the voice of this demon can echo loudly in my skull. I’ve tried to fill up my life, myself, with work, experience, people, literature, beautiful scenic drives, everything I think a body could want. It always goes right through me, though.

Nothing stays.

Depression has rendered me a ghost in that sense. My transparent waking hours go unnoticed by most people I interact with, because you would only know you’re talking to a ghost if you reached out to try to touch them. No one reaches out to touch me anymore.

What continues to confound me, and what perhaps has since that day when I walked into the bathroom a corporeal child and came out an apparition, is this:

Who am I haunting?

If you are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, there are people who want to help. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1 (800) 273–8255, the international directory of helplines if you’re not in the U.S. and iamalive.org , a suicide prevention and depression support chat room if you aren’t comfortable or able to use the phone.