Hi Nimportequoi, Thankyou for your comment and kind words.

Your description of Jacob Marley's chains is very fitting. Sometimes when the tiredness, that cannot be properly described, hits it does feel like dragging chains or walking in a lake a molasses.

I think that grief and sadness is familiar to most but its not quite the same as long term, often treatment resistant, depression and that's why it is just so foreign (and frightening) to those who have not experienced it. They can see a reason and a rationale for grief or sadness due to some misadventure but not for what we are feeling. Hence places like this are very useful because there are people here who DO get it as evidenced by the consensus in the descriptions in this thread. Winston Churchill referred to his depression as The Black Dog and you can see where that comes from - and this is coming from someone whose best friends during the course of my life have been black dogs so I mean no insult to those beauties

I think that some of us have lived with depression for so long that we ARE quite calm about it as it is our normal, but it can be isolating so it is good to have somewhere to talk and share without feeling judged or misunderstood. I think maybe we are very resilient folk or we simply would not be here. It takes a lot of strength to keep facing it day after day and still manage to be kind to others but I find that being open to others even though their experiences may be vastly different from mine, and to be supportive towards them, is something that eases the daily burden.