It was the long term situational depression of a teenager who is being bullied, is deaply ashamed of it, and sees no way out.

What I didn’t know was that help was on the way. By some miracle I found my first serious girlfriend and, let’s see, the adults always say to ignore the bullies but that never works because they know that you are only pretending to ignore them. But since nothing else existed for me besides my girlfriend — we fall so hard at that age — I really was ignoring them, so I ceased to be fun to pick on. Problem = solved.

As an adult I did not suffer from other that relatively brief bouts of situational depression. My wife suffered from chronic depression along with SAD, and took a lot of meds over the years, but not recently. I can’t help but attribute the new situation to all the new friends she has as a result of becoming a much sought after stage manager in the Rhode Island community theater scene. As a tonic for depression, new friends and people who gush about how much they appreciate your work are hard to beat.