I have a few obsessions related to mental health. I worry that I will appear blatantly insane to other people. I worry that I'm actually crazier than I realize. And I worry, constantly, especially these days, that I might be depressed.

I was very depressed, very recently, one of those lying around in the bed sobbing a lot and only getting up to stare glumly out the window and cry some more sorts of depressions. I won't go any further into it. Suffice to say that I worry that the depression hasn't actually lifted, that I am fooling myself, that I am a thoroughly depressive person, steeped in woe and melancholy to the very core, and that there is not now and never will be any joy in my life.

That's a pretty damned depressing string of thoughts to follow through your head. Mostly they run through my head in the morning, or really, in the mid-afternoon, when I wake up.

I sleep until mid-afternoon because I'm lying awake in bed all night (breathing carefully, feeling very relaxed, but still awake all the same) thinking about this thing or that thing, until presumably I eventually pass out.

And actually I'm pretty lazy about getting up. Instead of getting straight out of bed when I awaken, I'd rather lie there for an hour or three obsessing about whether my lying abed so late is a sign of depression.

It goes something like this:

Depressed people lie in bed all day, I'm lying in bed all day, does that mean I'm depressed? Does it? Does it? Do I feel depressed? Do I?

And that continues until I feel so anxious that I might be depressed that I cry about it, and begin to feel pretty depressed.

And then, I finally get up.