I had a mental breakdown

[Iroscato]

See, this shit is exactly why depression should be recognised as being potentially as harmful as epilepsy or shcizophrenia. We've gone from grouping them all together as the result of demonic possession to treating depression as the mental illness equivalent of man-flu.

"Oh, just cheer up, it's not all bad!"

Well fuck you, try going a week with all the colour in the world being sucked out and everything is shit and awful and hopeless and you fall deeper and deeper into the horrible, twisted spiral of your every failure and regret and fear and bad memory. Now extrapolate to a lifetime, never sure when it's going to sneak up behind you and bite you on the bum, then latch on like some kind of hope-draining lamprey that exists only to make your existence as unbearable as physically possible. And every time you fight it, you're just fighting yourself, so even if you beat it back you've just made it harder for yourself to fend it off the next time it comes a-nibbling.

We truly are our own worst enemies. And that is why you must never, EVER stop talking to people. A ream of cliches spring to mind - together we're stronger, etc etc. But cliches are cliches for a reason. Humans are social animals for a reason - we need each other, and indulging in that most basic of evolutionary components can drag us out of places we never knew had an exit.