What it feels like TO HAVE DEPRESSION

The first time I got ill, it was Christmas. I was 12. I hid in my bedroom for almost the entirety of the school holidays, too scared to go outside because of the germs that lurked everywhere, invisible cells determined to kill me. Winter had brought with it a sort of perpetual darkness that seemed tailor-made to suit how I felt – bleak, lifeless, empty. There were many theories put forward by my parents to explain that first breakdown: my hormones; the stress and upheaval of a newborn baby brother; the fact that