I laid in bed, ignoring the pile of clothes that became my floor. “Depression is rage turned inward,” Dr. Melfi had said on The Sopranos. I felt how true it was at that moment. So much anger boiled up inside, it made me want to scream.

Sitting here, thinking back to that long period of time, it is only a gray stain in my memory, a radio channel tuned to static. I began to focus on TV shows, video games, books, anything to pass the time. Nothing was exciting, only less boring. What were others feeling? I wondered.

Three years, that's the approximate time it took for “hurricane depression” to move its way through me. I went through all of its stages, sadness, deep pain, and then emptiness. When the depression began to fade away, like runoff after a thunderstorm, I felt the first feelings I had in a long time. What? I'm actually excited?

During the worst of it, people would talk to me, and I would smile back, wondering if I was responding the correct way. Someone told me a joke, I should laugh now. Someone is saying something sad, I should look sad now. I lost any positive emotions, but I also lost negative emotions. I became invincible. No one could judge me. “Isn’t it too early in the morning for cake?” the cashier asked, something that would have made me feel self-conscious before, but not this time. “No,” I replied, handing him my money.

Depression was like a blanket, warm and cold and suffocating. I hated it, but I also liked its emptiness. Nothing can touch me! I had thought, I'm already unhappy enough. Soon, however, I desired to feel anything, anything other than the emptiness inside me.

I soon became angry. Stress, anger, and hatred were my only feelings. Why couldn't I feel something? I would ask myself repeatedly. I would wish to be depressed again, so I would at least feel something. Feelings? Are those what other people have? I wondered, how can other people have feelings all the time? The emptiness became who I was, a flat zero.

The depression left on its own. I didn't have a reason to be depressed, and there wasn't a reason for it to leave. At first I felt glimmers of happiness, then full rays of light. “I am happy now,” I thought.”I am not depressed anymore.” Compared to depression, any amount of happiness was enough. While I did not have a reason to be unhappy, I did get a reason to be happy.