In her book Darkness Is My Only Companion (Brazos, 2015), Kathryn Greene-McCreight takes up the challenging task of putting her lived experience of depression into words. She does an admirable job, using a mixture of description and metaphor.

I am not necessarily sad when I am depressed. I am not necessarily “down.” Sometimes I just have a gnawing, overwhelming sense of grief, with no identifiable cause. I grieve as though my loved ones were dead. I imagine their funerals. I feel completely alone and isolated. I feel as if I am walking barefoot on broken glass. When one steps on broken glass, the weight of one’s body grinds the glass shards in further with every movement. The weight of my very existing grinds the shards of grief deeper into my soul. When I am depressed, every thought, every breath, every conscious moment hurts.

Pair this description with her contention that religious platitudes do little to help someone who lives with depression, along with Charles Spurgeon’s remarks about what not to say to a depressed person.