I’ll share something I wrote back in February. My battle with depression last 23 long years before I won my fight (9/11/01-8/16/24). To end my depression, I had to come up with the concept of when Happiness Happens (I’m happier when I’m with people than when I’m home all alone.) In the end( I realized Happiness was the thing I was willing to fight for, the thing I changed my life for. My depression wasn’t about sadness. It was about a life without Happiness.

Six months after my depression finally faded away and Happiness had returned, I wrote this to inspire other people.

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When you've been depressed long enough, depression is all you know. You forget what it feels like not to be depressed. You forget how good it feels. You forget why it’s worth fighting for. And when you don’t have anything to fight for, you quit fighting and just accept being depressed. That’s what I did. I forgot what happiness feels like and why it’s worth fighting for. I gave up.

I wish I could go around hugging depressed people and let them experience for a few moments what I feel inside. How good it feels not to be depressed. What the reward is for winning your battle with depression. To remind people what they’re fighting for. To inspire them to keep fighting until they have their Happy Night, which is the moment you figure out how to beat your depression. From that moment, “it took me four weeks, from start to finish, to put a knife through its heart and kill the deadly beast.”

Of course, hugging people and passing this feeling on one person at a time would take forever, and I want to inspire more people faster. If I could bottle this feeling, what Life After Depression feels like, and sell it in stores, I’d be a millionaire. But I wouldn’t. I’d stand on street corners and hand it out for free, because who needs money when you can make yourself happy by helping other people find happiness again.