I had a meltdown the other week, as I like to call my occasional depressive episodes. I had been getting progressively sadder this past couple of weeks, for many reasons—not the least of which is the vitriol around me.

It took one tiny incident to push me over the edge, and I ended up bawling in my parked car—so loudly, I freaked out a passing pedicab driver. It took me a few minutes to collect myself and drive home.

The next day, still a little dazed, I overheard two girls talking in the mall. One was complaining about her life, and how something “depressed” her.

“Hoy, ha,” her companion snapped. “Over ka. You have no right to be depressed.” No right!

She could have been talking to me, I guess.

I have work, friends, a family, and a good life. I don’t have to wonder where my next meal will come from. I have no handicaps, and kicked illness with little permanent damage.

I drive a car, can travel occasionally, and live in a place of my own. Yup, I have no major reason to have sadness bearing down on me like a ton of bricks—or to put it more actively, I have no reason to be sad.

That’s the thing, see. That is why depression is such a pain: It doesn’t make sense.

It’s a disease, not drama. It happens because there is a physiological process in your body that is going haywire—in this case, you’re using up the happy hormones in your body too fast, you hit an empty tank sooner than others.

 Mood and disposition

It’s like how bad cells multiply and take over organs in cancer, or how the pancreas stops producing enough insulin to regulate sugar when you have diabetes. Unfortunately, instead of a visible tumor, or a measurable spike in blood sugar, depression is manifested mainly in one’s mood and disposition—which are supposedly within one’s control.

The more dangerous part for many depressives is that, precisely because of this idea that we don’t have the right to be sad because “so many others are worse off”—well, people hide it. We turn inwards.

I burdened close friends for years, and there’s really not much more to be said, so nowadays, I choose who to talk about it with—my psychiatrist, or a friend who is in the same boat and totally gets it. Or I adjust my medication on my doctor’s advice, take a walk, listen to music, sniff some lavender, or watch something funny.

Soldiering on

Of course I have no right. I drive home late at night in still heavy, rainy payday traffic, and I see people still waiting for a ride, who have to get up in about five hours to do it all over again. I know people who scrounge for money for their kid’s next tuition, for medicines, for rent, for food. And they’re soldiering on, even smiling.

Meanwhile, a depressive can be ignored by a friend, bothered by a small hiccup at work, or even affected by a Facebook post or a newspaper headline—and he or she suddenly wants to die. How “sick” is that?

Depression can be scientifically explained, but what it does to you is beyond scientific description. The doubts, the fears, the lack of interest in the things that used to make you happy, the gray that colors  your world, the very thought that life isn’t worth the trouble—I don’t think they’ve invented the tests to precisely quantify these “symptoms” just yet. Sometimes, the tiny lump in your throat feels bigger than the universe.

‘Deep inside an illness’

In her haunting book “Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression,” former Elle UK magazine editor Sally Brampton wrote: “You see, we want to be better, we want to be ourselves, and it is not through any lack of trying that we fail. But we do fail, because we are deep inside an illness. And it is that failure, and that struggle, that sends us into a despair so terrible that we would rather not exist.”

(It was another reminder of the reality of this illness that Brampton lost her battle with depression last May, despite the book ending on a high note; she took her own life by walking into the sea.)

“Think of it as an asthma attack,” my psychiatrist said. “When there’s a high pollen count, you react. The stressors are the pollen.”

Incidentally, last Oct.  5, the Philippine Mental Health Act of 2016 was finally filed in the Senate.

It’s a bill that basically wants mental health to be given the attention, resources and recognition it deserves, so even the people who, strictly speaking, have more of a “right” to be depressed than I do can be spared the discrimination, stigma, prejudice, even criminalization of their state of mind.

Mental illness is a disease—not a curse, a punishment, or an unfortunate reason to ostracize or judge anybody. When this becomes law, maybe people can have sober and compassionate discussions on things Filipinos always used to talk about in whispers.

So no, I really don’t have the “right” to be a depressive. But I still am, no matter how hard I have tried most of my adult life not to be, and I can’t let myself feel guilty about that.

Thanks to medication, my doctor, and my friends, though, depression hasn’t kept me from living a full life. I hope many others with much bigger burdens can find the same support.